If so, I have a blog recommendation for you:

A Shrink for Men — A blog for professional men in complicated relationships and dissatisfying careers combining psychology, insight, humor, irony, sexuality, and social commentary.

Don’t be put off by the “professional men” part, especially if you are caught up in a relationship that leaves you feeling like you’re a victim of war.  And also, while the blog is written primarily for men, women can likely find some good advice in the articles on workplace bullying and mobbing:

Workplace Bullying and Office Politics: What is Mobbing?
How to Avoid Bullying and Mobbing at Work
How to Recognize 7 Personality Types in Office Politics
6 More Office Personality Types

As for the bad relationships… if you’re a man and you really need some support on that issue, start with the most recent articles on the blog and work your way back, or start at the first article and work forward from there. Definitely read the comments left by readers on some of the articles (they often offer additional insight on the article).

How do you know if you are in a truly bad relationship (since the perfect relationship is, after all, pretty much a myth)? Well, here are a few articles from the blog that can help you figure out if you are in one:

When Love Hurts: The Emotionally Abused Man
13 Signs Your Wife or Girlfriend is a Borderline or a Narcissist
Relationship Roller Coaster Ride: The Cycle of Abuse
Is Your Girlfriend or Wife a Professional Victim?
10 Signs Your Girlfriend or Wife is an Emotional Bully
Traumatic Love: Is Your Narcissistic or Borderline Wife or Girlfriend Making You Sick?
25 Signs your Narcissistic or Borderline Wife or Girlfriend is Traumatizing You
12 Signs You Should Break Up With Your Girlfriend or Boyfriend or Spouse

Believe it or not, I found this blog linked from another page that I found via an only slightly-related Twitter link (sometimes it pays to follow links and see where they lead you). I’ve known more than one guy who stayed in an abusive relationship for years, then finally got out but at great cost (both emotionally, and in some cases, financially). If you are in such a relationship, the healthy thing to do is GET OUT as soon as possible. Note I did not say “get help” or “get counseling” with the intent of trying to “save the relationship” (or marriage), because this type of abusive relationship can NEVER be saved — it can only be prolonged, but the longer you prolong it the worse it gets. If only information like this had been available 35 years ago, it might have saved some friends of mine from considerable grief.

The interesting thing about this blog is that it is written by a woman with a PsyD degree, who apparently has seen a lot of men that have been emotionally abused (or worse) by their bosses or significant others.  Yet this is a segment of society that seems mostly invisible — while battered and emotionally abused women get a lot of press and sympathy, when it’s men on the receiving end they are often either ignored, or it’s “blame the victim” time.  Just to put it in perspective, name me one city in the world that has a special facility for battered and abused men.  “Homeless shelters” that provide shelter for drug abusers and winos don’t count (people who don’t abuse alcohol or use drugs really don’t want to sleep in a room full of people who do, if there is any other alternative, and that’s true regardless of gender).  Seems like nearly every county of any size has a shelter for battered and abused women these days, but when a man is the victim he’s expected to just fend for himself, and the cruel irony is that he’ll probably be at least suspected of being the actual abuser.  And if there are minor children, they will only very rarely be left with an abusive father, but how often do the courts award custody to an abusive mother without even looking into the situation? Talk about discrimination…

And yes, I do realize that battered and abused women do exist, and when that happens it’s despicable. But there is also a certain percentage of females that know that the police and the courts tend to assume that whenever physical violence or emotional abuse takes place, it’s the male who started it, so these women use that unwarranted assumption to their advantage to manipulate the system (and whether you are a male or a female, you’ve probably known a few women like this.  Guys tend to use a word to describe such women; it rhymes with “itch”).

I really hope that everyone reading this is in a healthy relationship (if you are in a relationship) and in a great workplace (if you are employed), and can honestly say “none of this applies to me”, but if that’s not the case and you are a man, there is a lot of good advice and support to be found at this blog. Oh, and if you are in law enforcement and/or the court system, and you are at all interested in being fair to those you serve, it wouldn’t hurt if you read a few of the articles on this site — it might open your eyes just a bit.

Maybe I should have written this article a year ago… but anyway, it seems there are a lot of people who have been forced to move out of their homes for one reason or another. Very often they go looking for an apartment and unless they are really fortunate, they often find that apartment living is nowhere near as desirable as their prebvious living arrangements.

For many of these people, there is another option they may have never considered, but probably should. Today, it’s called manufactured housing. When I was younger, they were called mobile homes. Very old people may still think of them as trailers. But a trailer is to a manufactured home as a beat-up VW from the 60’s is to a luxury car of today. Manufactured housing has gotten MUCH better over the years, yet far too many people can’t stop thinking of them as “trailers.”

So, let me explain to you the advantages and disadvantages of manufactured home living:

The biggest advantage is that whether you currently own a home or are renting an apartment, you can get far more bang for your buck with a mobile home. Single wide mobile homes (even ones of recent manufacture) can often be had for under $10,000 used, in a mobile home park. As with any home, some folks don’t take care of their homes, while others keep them immaculate, so if you look at used manufactured homes, don’t be surprised (or put off) if the first one you see looks like a dump – just say “no” and move on. In any case, when you find one you like you will almost certainly find that even with the lot rent (or property tax, if you buy one on private property), you will be paying less per month for your home payments than you are paying for your current living arrangements – and if that’s not the case, then I can pretty much assure you that the manufactured home will be a step up for you!

Another advantage is that you are building up equity in your home. Granted, it may not be all that much, but then again if you keep up your property and don’t overpay to begin with, when you move out you may be able to recoup much of what you’ve paid. EDIT: Don’t read too much into this – it is very true that many types of manufactured homes, particularly the older single-wide mobile homes, depreciate in value over the years.  However, if you buy one that’s nearly fully depreciated, fix it up and improve its appearance, and then resell it, it is possible to actually make a little money on the deal – and by “a little” I mean “maybe enough to fill your gas tank a few times”, not “enough to make a down payment on your next home.” My point here is that when you do decide to move, unless the place is a real dump you can probably get something out of it, whereas with an apartment you might get your security deposit back, if you’re lucky.

And one other BIG advantage for some is that, because you own the home, you have more control over it. This is particularly true when it comes to pets. Whereas many landlords won’t allow pets at all, most mobile home park owners tend to be much more lenient – after all, since you own the home, they won’t get stuck cleaning up after your pet when you move out. So if you are being forced out of your home and your kids are crying at the prospect of having to give up Fluffy (particularly if Fluffy is a cat or a small dog), you really should start looking into manufactured homes.

Speaking of kids, in many areas with mobile homes the streets are dead ends or cul-de-sacs, or may have speed bumps or other mechanisms to slow down cars. You may actually be able to let your child ride their bike on the street in front of your home without worrying that some idiot will come tearing through and mow them down. And in a mobile home park, your kids will almost certainly be able to find other kids to play with (of course, if it’s not a nice mobile home park, they may not be the kind of kids you want yours playing with).

One other thing to consider is that most mobile homes, whether new or used, come with appliances (if you are buying a used home, ASK the seller to state which appliances are included, and be sure those appliances INCLUDING make and model/serial numbers are listed on the the bill of sale or purchase agreement. A member of my family bought a mobile home once that contained a nice refrigerator – when they came to move in a couple days later, that new refrigerator had turned into an old, single-door wheezer that sounded like it was about to gasp and die. They called the local police, who paid the previous owner a visit and informed them that it would be illegal for them to sell or dispose of the refrigerator until the matter had been settled in court. When said previous owner realized they were probably going to get hauled into small claims court, it took them about half an hour to show up with the new refrigerator and make a swap. YOU may not be so lucky, so be sure you and the seller understand EXACTLY what you are buying, and get everything listed on some kind of document relating to the sale, and signed by the seller!). You may get furniture too, but if it’s furniture that originally came with the home when new, it’s probably not real high quality.

Now, the fact that you own (or are buying) a home can also have its disadvantages. Unlike an apartment, you can’t just walk away after giving 30 days notice. If the home is in a park, you may be responsible for either selling the home to another person, or moving the home out of the park. Until you do one or the other, you will still be responsible for paying lot rent. If it’s on private property, you will have the same hassles as you would in selling a house (although if you don’t overprice it, a mobile home should be a lot easier to sell in today’s market).

You will have maintenance costs. On a newer home these will likely be minimal — remember, a manufactured home is built to go down the road at 70 miles per hour, so if it survives that intact, it will probably take quite a bit to damage it. But when something does need to be fixed, it may be a bit more costly that the same repair in a home because even today, manufactured home makers sometimes use weird parts (like non-standard sized doors). It’s not that replacements are unavailable, but they will probably cost you more than you’d like. If you’re careful not to damage your home, these expenses will hopefully be minimal. With an older home, you may be faced with replacing a water heater or even a furnace at some point, and those are expensive repairs. If in doubt, have those big-ticket items checked out before you buy.

The bad: Who has seen the wind? Well, if you see a tornado, you don’t want to be in a mobile home, new or old. So if you live in “tornado alley”, make sure that there is a tornado shelter (or an accessible basement) in the park or on your property. By the way, it’s not really true that tornadoes are attracted to mobile home parks, but it is true that when a tornado his a manufactured home community it generally leaves a real mess, and what that attracts is news crews and their cameras.

The ugly: Before you even think of moving into a mobile home park, there are some things you absolutely want to do. The first is to talk to the park management and ask for a copy of the park rules, and find out what the monthly lot rent is, and find out if you will be changed for utilities such as water, sewer, electricity, garbage removal, Cable TV, broadband Internet, etc. Also find out who provides those services or utilities – if it’s the park, and you will have to pay extra for a service provided by the park, you can just about bet they are adding a surcharge above what you’d pay if you were buying the service directly. And if you are looking at a particular manufactured home, make sure that if you buy it the park management will allow you to stay in the park (unless you want to move it to a different park, which is of course your prerogative, but moving a manufactured home sometimes causes unanticipated damage to the home, and in any case you’ll want to find out how much that move is going to cost you.  And in some states, their may be exit fees in a mobile home park, although those are illegal in other states such as Michigan). Also ask about your pets, if you have any – you don’t want to move in and THEN find out that the management has a problem with your pets.

There are a lot of mobile home park owners that are just great folks, but then again, there are a some that are horrible people and scam artists. To make sure that you don’t get one who thinks their park is their own personal version of a mini-Nazi Germany, and they are taking the role of a little Hitler, go to the park on a weekend (preferably a pleasant afternoon) and stop and have a chat with a few random residents – preferably those who appear to be about your same age/gender/race etc. Ask them how they like living in the park, and if they’ve ever had any problems with park management OR with their neighbors. If they seem hesitant to respond, or appear to be choosing their words carefully, that’s a bad sign. And if the management actually shows up and berates you for talking to residents in the park when you don’t yet live there, drive away and never come back!

EDIT: I forgot to mention, though I had intended to, that there is a wide variance in the quality of manufactured homes. Some are mass-produced in such a way that the construction is rather poor, whereas other brands have a reputation for much higher quality.  Another possible reason for visiting a mobile home park, if you’re considering the purchase of a used home, is to try and talk to people who own a similar model to the one you’re considering (or an even older model from the same manufacturer) and see how they feel about their homes.  Also, if you find that the park managers seem like reasonable folks that you can chat with, you can ask them their opinion of various manufactured home brands that you might be considering.  The caveat here is that they might be in cahoots with a local dealer (or they might even be a local dealer), and thus may have some incentive to talk up whatever brand that dealer is selling — even so, they can often help steer you away from a brand that’s got a reputation as having really poor construction. Now back to the original article…

Definitely read the park rules, and discuss them with your spouse/children/anyone else that may be living with you in the home. Some parks will have rules that sound okay at first glance but when you think about them a bit more, you realize that they’re something you can’t live with. For example, if you are a bit absent-minded, you don’t want to live in a park where you are penalized for forgetting to cut your grass on a particular day, or to take in your garbage cans by a certain hour. If the rules seem a bit unreasonable, the park owners might be very unreasonable. And if a park looks extra nice when you drive in – almost like a garden spot – it might be that way because the park management is quite anal about forcing residents to make their properties look that way (or the management will do it, and send the negligent resident a big bill!). Can you live with that?

The upside of a nice park is that it may be less attractive to those you might not want to live close to. Just as you are looking for inexpensive housing, so are many other people, for various reasons. Some want inexpensive housing because they’d rather spend their money on alcohol or drugs. This is why it pays to take some time to talk to existing residents – you can get a pretty good idea of what the park is like, and if you ask the right questions you can find out if there are residents that are likely to try to sell drugs to members of your family (which, hopefully, you want to avoid — or at very least, you’d want to be in a different part of the park).

A far better alternative in many cases is to find a relatively new mobile home in good shape on private property. These do exist in many areas, but are hard to find. Real estate agents hate them (and often will use every trick in the book to talk you out of buying one) because their commission isn’t nearly as high on a mobile home as on a stick-built home. And if a real estate agent does accept a listing for one, they will often jack up the selling price far beyond what the home and property is worth (in one case I know of, the real estate agent priced the home and property at just under $70,000. You could have bought land in the same area, had well and septic and concrete pad installed, and a brand new mobile home placed on the property for about $40,000 at the time).

Which brings me to another point – if you know what you are doing, sometimes the best thing to do is buy a piece of vacant land in an area zoned for mobile homes, and develop it yourself, then place a new or used mobile home on the property. Be sure to talk to your city or township officials before attempting this, as you will need to be concerned about things like proper zoning and minimum lot sizes. You’ll also want to know what utilities are available in the area. Buying real estate is tricky, so you may want to hire a real estate agent to act as YOUR real estate agent (to protect YOUR interests, not the seller’s) during the process. On the other hand, if you can use some property that’s been in your family for a long time, and there are no zoning issues, that may be a way to go.

EDIT: Keep in mind that newer manufactured homes (the type that come in two or more sections, sometimes called “modular homes”, that are virtually indistinguishable from stick-built homes after they have been placed on the property) can usually go anyplace that a comparably-sized home can go, depending on local laws.  Those units generally aren’t limited to areas zoned for mobile homes, but the cost will be higher because the original purchase price is higher (generally at least $10,000 or more higher than a brand new, comparably-sized double-wide mobile home) and they generally have to be placed on a regular house-type foundation (not just placed on a concrete slab and supported by cement blocks, as is often the case with mobile homes).  Depending on how well-made the home is, this is the one type of manufactured home that actually can increase in value, although to a large degree that can depend on the condition of the property and the surrounding neighborhood. In some areas you can buy these homes and have them placed on a lot for only a fraction of what a similar contractor-built home would cost, and considering that not all contractors do the best possible job when building a new home, you may actually be happier with a factory-built modular when all is said and done.

[Tip: What's the difference between a double wide mobile home and a modular home? Look under the home. If you see long I-beams that span the length of the home, and metal framing, and maybe axles where the wheels would be attached (although those are often removed after the home is delivered) then it's a double wide mobile home. Also, if it's sitting on a cement pad and supported by concrete blocks, with vinyl or metal skirting hiding the underside of the home, then it's more than likely a double wide mobile home.  However, if when you look under the home you see wood framing (similar to what you'd see in the basement of a home that doesn't have a finished ceiling), and if the home is sitting on a regular house-type basement or a foundation with crawl space, it's probably a modular home. If it's in a mobile home park, it's almost certainly a double-wide mobile home, except under very special circumstances (e.g., it was previously the park owner's residence).]

Often, a great way to find a manufactured home, or property where you can place a manufactured home, is to drive around in places where there are already such homes, be it a mobile home park or an area where you see manufactured homes on private property. Look for “For Sale” signs, and use all the normal caution you’d use when buying a regular house or piece of property (particularly with private property, do not assume that the zoning laws have not changed since the homes you see were placed there! You can often keep using an existing home as a residence, but you may never be able to move a newer or better home onto the property, or onto adjacent vacant property you might purchase. Don’t assume anything!).

You can also look for manufactured homes for sale in newspaper classifieds, in the free “real estate” throwaways they pass out in some cities, and even online in places like Craigslist or eBay. Note that when buying from a private owner, you want to be extra diligent in looking for needed repairs. If possible, take someone with you that has lived in a manufactured home for several years – they may spot problems that you wouldn’t think to look for.

Unless your only other option is sleeping in a tent, never buy a manufactured home that was built more than about 20 to 25 years ago. Prior to that, the same construction standards used today were not in effect, and you may find homes that have very thin walls, non-standard fittings, and lots of other problems. Never buy a home with windows you have to crank to open, unless you are in a very temperate area – those windows lose heat in the winter like you would not believe.

This is just a suggestion for those who may need affordable housing. Newer manufactured homes can be quite nice, especially when compared to some of the overpriced, run-down apartments being offered in some neighborhoods, and many people don’t even consider the option because all they think of is drafty trailers with next to no insulation, and tin roofs, and bathrooms so small you can wash your hands in the sink while sitting on the john. You may still find some of those things (particularly in used homes) but very often people are VERY pleasantly surprised when they walk into a newer manufactured home, and find it’s nothing like what they imagined. You can, of course, buy a brand new mobile home (in which case the dealer almost certainly knows of several mobile home parks where you can place it) but be aware that mobile home dealers are very much like automobile dealers – some will give you a fair deal and a wonderful experience, and others will give you an experience that you’ll regret forever (there is nothing like talking to previous customers to find out about a particular dealer).

Also, if a dealer offers to do the prep work on your private property before delivering a manufactured home, make sure that it is clearly understood and that you have it in writing who is responsible if anything goes wrong.  For example, if the dealer hires a contractor to install a septic tank and drain field, and then the plumbing inspector refuses to pass it because it’s not up to code, do you really want to be on the hook for having it done over?  You probably will be, if you’re not very careful about how the contract is written!

In any case, if you are looking for housing, good luck in your search!

EDIT: I am pleased to note that The Consumerist found this article, and that many of their readers made comments on their site. While many of the comments there are quite valid, I take personal offense to the one guy who suggested that this might be “a spam blog grabbing stuff from Associated Content.” I want that person to know that every word of this “most obvious garbage” was written by myself.  And yes, my blog is on WordPress.com – so what, at least it’s not Geocities! Also, I will note that my comments were primarily based on what I know about mobile home living in the Great Lakes area. If people in the SF Bay area are paying $200,000+ for a mobile home then all I can say is that some enterprising Californians ought to start buying mobile homes from the factories in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, etc. and hauling them out to the Golden State – even after the transportation charges, there’s got to be a huge profit potential there, if they really sell for that kind of money.  Now, if we are talking newer manufactured (modular) homes then that’s a slightly different matter, although even then I still tend to think somebody’s making a HUGE profit out there!

I’ve learned that one should never say “never” — after all, circumstances may change, and the thing you thought you’d never do becomes the very thing you feel you must do — in my case, leaving my religion would be the most prominent example. But while many Mac users may leave one with the impression that owning a Mac is somewhat akin to belonging to a cult, not everyone who buys a Mac is all that enchanted with it. I’ve had my Mac Mini for about two years now, and I just can’t see myself ever buying another Mac. What follows is solely my opinion, and nothing in the following paragraphs should be taken as statements of fact — it’s all just my opinions and my experience.

I had high expectations when I got my Mac Mini a couple of years ago. My son had a Mac and was quite happy with it. Notice my use of the word “was”, as in the past tense — my sense in talking to him is that while he’s nowhere near as down on the Mac as I am, he’s still a bit disappointed by the direction that Apple’s been taking with OS X. He originally got his Mac when the “Tiger” version of OS X was being shipped, and under Tiger things mostly just worked. Leopard brought problems, and from what we are reading, Snow Leopard is bringing even more problems, though not to all users.

Anyway, I had been using an underpowered box running Windows 2000, and basically wanted something that would play video smoothly and generally run a lot faster. I realized the Mac Mini was no speed demon, but at my age I’m not playing interactive games or anything like that. But if I go to a site like Hulu, I want the video to play without unexplained pauses, and in that I was disappointed — the Mac Mini just can’t seem to pull that off. If I play a 45 minute show, I’ll probably have half a dozen incidents of the picture just freezing up for several seconds, while the sound may or may not continue on.

But even that I could live with. The real problem with the Mac is the hidden cost of owning a Mac. Yes, you can buy a relatively inexpensive Mac, but the cost to get it working the way you want it to may be higher than you expect.

One of the reasons I bought a Mac Mini was because I don’t like the idea of an integrated display. As long as the display and the computer are separate, if the display goes bad I can grab a backup monitor and I’m back in business. But also, I wanted to use my own peripherals. Several articles I had read indicated that the Mac “just works” with most peripherals. Sadly, I have found that is not the case.

The first thing that wouldn’t work is a Memorex scanner that I’ve had for a few years, that I really liked because it could clearly scan a small three dimensional object without totally losing focus, as long as the depth of the object wasn’t over an inch or so. That meant that, for example, text near the spine of a book scanned clearly even if the book wouldn’t lay totally flat. Unfortunately, this scanner only had a Windows driver. Fortunately, when I got the Mini there was a free-after-rebate deal on certain accessories, among which was an all-in-one unit that included a scanner. So in order to get a scanner that is a bit faster, but that doesn’t scan three-dimensional objects quite as well, I had to do a free-after-rebate deal on a clunky five-function unit, out of which I only use one of the functions. But, okay, I’m told that my old Memorex scanner might not work under Windows 7, either, so I’ll give them a pass on that one.

Then there was my Samsung laser printer. The Mac ships with drivers for some Samsung models, but of course not the one I have, even though it’s a very popular model (ML-1740). It turned out that the only way to obtain a Mac driver was to go to Samsung’s Australia site. Well, okay, that worked, but it was hardly “out of the box” support for my printer, and to this day the Mac doesn’t natively support that model. I now wonder if my printer would stop working if I were to upgrade to Snow Leopard — it’s a real concern because some other users have lost the ability to use certain peripherals after upgrading.

My keyboard had a PS2 plug. Can’t use that; the Mac only supports USB keyboards, although you can get a cheap adapter on eBay. That works, but on about one out of three reboots the keyboard is not recognized. Of course I could have sprung for an expensive genuine Mac keyboard, but I don’t have money to burn. My son finally got me a USB keyboard for my birthday, and that works great as long as it’s plugged directly into the Mac Mini and not into a USB hub (I also had other keyboard issues that I described in previous articles).

And so it went. We found that not all USB hubs would work reliably with the Mac — you have to get one that is known compatible. Plug the Mac into a wired network, and it’s a crap shoot whether it will see the other machines on the network, or whether users at those machines can see your shared directories.

But the thing that really was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me was my webcam. I had TWO perfectly good webcams that worked great under Windows, but the Mac wasn’t having either of them. So my son went online and found that many users said that the Sony EyeToy was compatible with the Mac. And he got me one, and it does work — with every program except iChat and PhotoBooth. Use it in Macam (third-party webcam software), and it works great. Under Skype, check. In fact it works beautifully in any NON-Apple program. But iChat and PhotoBooth simply refuse to recognize that there’s a camera there.

Now, every time I make a post like this, some Mac fanboy will come along and say something like, “Well, you can just buy program XYZ and then it will work!” Well, in case you haven’t figured it out, I don’t have spare cash to burn. That’s why I got a Mac Mini (on sale) and tried where possible to re-use peripherals. That’s why I try to use only free software whenever possible. In the Mac world, that really limits your choices.

I’m told — and I don’t know if this is true or not — that the only reason the webcam won’t work in iChat is because some internal preferences are set incorrectly. In the Linux world, or even in the Windows world, someone would likely publish an article telling you how to reset those preferences, so you could get your hardware to work. Of course, with Windows (and probably in many Linux distros), it’s likely that the webcam would just work from the get-go with all software capable of using it. But from were I sit, it almost looks like perhaps Apple DELIBERATELY cripples iChat and PhotoBooth, so if you try to use anything other than an overpriced webcam with an Apple logo on it (assuming you haven’t purchased a high-end Mac with a built-in webcam), you might have issues. And then some turd figured out how to fix the problem and rather than publish the information to help other users, they decided to create their own add-on software and sell it, and now that’s the only solution ever offered to someone experiencing this problem.

In other words, whether because of malice or neglect, some third-party webcams won’t work with Apple software.  And Apple apparently seems to think the only solution is to buy their overpriced hardware (virtually ALL Apple hardware is overpriced, in my opinion), or buy some third party software that fixes whatever preference or bug exists in those programs that stops them from recognizing the webcam.

And THAT is what I hate about the Mac world – everything has a price. Well, not everything, but far too many things. I look at software like Asterisk and FreePBX and realize that if these had been written to run on the Mac, it’s likely that each of these programs would be priced at several hundred dollars (rather than given away free) AND there would be additional charges for each module, codec, etc. People wouldn’t write helpful how-to articles that show how to accomplish a task in four or five lines of dial plan; instead they’d write a small program to inject those lines of code and then charge $10 or $20 for it. And, I guarantee you, if that model were used, none of that software would be nearly as popular as it is today.

That’s not my only problem with the Mac, of course. You know how Windows sometimes freezes up and you get to watch the spinning hourglass? On my old Windows box, it rarely spun for more that a few seconds, although occasionally it might go on for a minute or two. On the Mac, you get the “spinning beach ball of death” — it may freeze up just one application, but far too often it freezes up the entire system, to the point where keyboard and mouse input is either totally ignored, or it takes anywhere from several seconds to a minute or two to respond to user input. This is one of the most frustrating things about owning a Mac — you never know when this will strike (usually at a very inconvenient time). I’d say it happens to me at least once a week.

Of course, I could reboot the system. On my old, slow, Windows box this usually took about three to four minutes, including the time required to start up the software I always had running (e-mail program, IM client, etc.). On the Mac, it seems to take ten minutes or more for the system to get into a fully stable state after rebooting. With early versions of Leopard, on at least a couple of occasions when I had to reboot, the system simply would not reboot and I wound up having to do a process called “Archive and Install”, which is sort of like reinstalling the operating system under Windows, except that all your existing data and most of your software settings are preserved (but not necessarily all your drivers for your hardware). Fortunately, whatever caused that problem seems to have been fixed in later versions of Leopard!

Then there’s Mac software. Some of it’s okay, much of it isn’t (again, just my opinion). Safari doesn’t hold a candle to Firefox, with one exception — if I highlight an entire article and drag it to the Mail program in order to send it to someone, coming out of Firefox it will only get plain text — no embedded links, and no graphics or photos. Coming from Safari, it gets everything. I have wondered if this is something Apple has done to sabotage the functionality of non-Apple web browsers — I sure wouldn’t put it past them, but have no way of knowing. Even when their software seems to work okay otherwise, it seems to always have strange limitations, like the aforementioned problem with iChat and PhotoBooth not recognizing my web cam when all non-Apple software does.

Another example: Apple’s Mail program is pretty good, though I liked Eudora on my old Windows box a bit better.  But it has one irritating flaw:  If it fails to connect with the POP server, it sometimes pops up a box asking you to re-enter your password.  Since I don’t know the password off the top of my head (I use a secure password, after all), usually I’ll just click cancel, assuming that the server problem will resolve itself shortly and my password will again be recognized. But when I hit cancel, Mail locks out the account (that is, it won’t check it for mail again) until you specifically right-click on the account and tell it to check for new mail.  Other e-mail programs can gracefully handle temporary server issues; why can’t Mail?

The ONE thing I really like about OS X is that you don’t have to worry about running an adware/spyware checker, and if you don’t want to use an anti-virus program it probably won’t matter (other than if you do use one, it may slow your system down even more). The Mac actually has a security model that works. This is not an insignificant thing — I used to really resent the amount of wasted time and resources I had to spend running software to avoid viruses, adware, etc. under Windows. However, I’ve read reports that lead me to think that this happy situation on the Mac may not persist forever, particularly if the Mac ever gains significant market share and thus becomes a much more appealing target for hackers (the bad kind). But then again, I wonder if I could achieve the same level of security by running a good desktop Linux distro, such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu Linux (but then I wonder, would I have the same hardware compatibility issues under Linux that I have under the Mac)?

So if you are wondering whether to get a Windows box with Windows 7, or a Mac with Snow Leopard, my advice to you — as a Mac user of almost two years — would be this: If you are wealthy, if the recession hasn’t affected you, and if you don’t mind being nickled-and-dimed to death for software that could likely be obtained for free on other platforms, then buy a high-end Mac and get AppleCare and bitch like hell (to the Apple “Geniuses”) whenever something isn’t working — you are the sort of customer Apple apparently wants (you have money to burn) and maybe they will take care of you. On the other hand, if you are not wealthy, and/or if you want to use free software whenever possible, and/or if you want your existing hardware to just work, you are probably going to want to stick with Windows (I say this with the caveat that Windows 7 will very likely “break” some older pieces of hardware, as often happens with new versions of Windows). If you REALLY like free software, try to pick up a gently used (one or two year old) PC, or if you are able, build your own PC from components (there are sites and videos that show how to do this) and then install a user-friendly Linux distribution – Ubuntu is the most popular, but check out Linux Mint as well — supposedly it’s basically Ubuntu with added support for playing various media types, and other tweaks to make it a bit more user-friendly.

Having said all the above, I will add this: My plan is to try and get at least a couple more years of use out of my Mac Mini — yes, it can be a royal pain in the posterior sometimes, but I just can’t afford to run out and buy a new computer every year or two. And in a couple years, a lot could change. Maybe Windows 7 will turn out to be a real dog (although it would have to be better than Vista — wouldn’t it?).  Maybe Snow Leopard is better than initial reports have led me to believe. And maybe, just maybe, Apple will finally realize that it has to start being compatible with a wider range of hardware if it wants acceptance.  Trying to lock users into buying only your products never works in the long term; either people figure out ways around it or they start to avoid your products altogether.

But right now, today, if my Mac Mini stopped working, the last thing I would do is buy a brand new Mac. I’m just not happy with it, nor am I ready to join the cult of Apple (the fanboys who’ll buy anything with an Apple logo, and when Apple suggests they buy something, they obediently whip out their credit cards). What I’d really like to find is a good, relatively inexpensive computer with approximately the same footprint as the Mac Mini (I really do like the compact size) but with low power consumption and enough horsepower to play videos without skipping or unexplained pauses.  If it came without a bundled copy of Windows (so that I could use a Linux distro without allowing Microsoft to make money on an OS that I might never use), that would make me even happier, though if it came bundled with Windows 7 at a low enough price, I might be tempted to go with it (I would not buy a computer with Vista at any price).  I’m hoping that Moore’s Law will kick in, and that within the next year or two, such computers will become available, maybe even commonplace.

Of course, I will also honestly say that my opinion of the Mac might be a lot different if a Mac Mini sold for, say, $199 or even $299.  But I know better than to suggest that — I don’t want members of the “cult of Mac” on my doorstep with pitchforks and torches!

(Disclosure for the FTC: Neither Apple nor Microsoft have ever paid me or given me anything for free, and in any case, I doubt that anything in this article could be construed as an “endorsement” for either company’s products, and this article isn’t intended to endorse anything).

Quoting from this blog post by Edward Champion:

This morning, the Federal Trade Commission announced that its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials would be revised in relation to bloggers. The new guidelines (PDF) specified that bloggers making any representation of a product must disclose the material connections they (the presumed endorsers) share with the advertisers. What this means is that, under the new guidelines, a blogger’s positive review of a product may qualify as an “endorsement” and that keeping a product after a review may qualify as “compensation.”

These guidelines, which will be effective as of December 1, 2009, require all bloggers to disclose any tangible connections. But as someone who reviews books for both print and online, I was struck by the inherent double standard. …

I strongly urge you to read the entire article (Disclosure: I’m not being paid to endorse that article, and I have no connection of any kind to the author).  I can understand why the FTC would want disclosure in some circumstances, but to some degree this strikes me as just plain silly.  On three occasions now I’ve reviewed books after receiving a free review copy of the book from the publisher.  If you read those reviews, you’d note that although I didn’t savagely trash any of the books, I don’t think I went out of my way to offer undeserved glowing praise either.  What I can tell you is that just because I receive a free book does not mean I’m going to bend over backwards to say nice things about it.  I can’t be bought in that manner, but even if I could be bought I certainly wouldn’t sell out my credibility for something with as little intrinsic value as a free book.

To put this in perspective, this sort of strikes me as saying something akin to “every radio station that accepts a free disc from someone in the music industry is guilty of taking payola.”  Of course the FTC doesn’t say that, because that would be ludicrous.  Yet that’s sort of what I feel is being implied here — the idea that a small value item (a free book in this case) would cause someone to pump up a dog of a book just seems ridiculous to me. However, having said that, I don’t object to disclosure per se, but here’s my issue with it:  Let’s suppose I were to buy a book (or DVD or computer game or whatever) and I really liked it and wrote a glowing article about it – would the FTC consider that an “endorsement” and, because I did NOT include a disclosure (since in this hypothetical case, I bought the item with my own money), consider that grounds to begin an investigation?

What I’m getting at here is that you have the classic question, “How will they know?” If a blogger includes a disclosure then presumably all is fine.  But if that blogger feels there is no need for a disclosure because there was no “compensation” received, could that under some unknown set of circumstances trigger an investigation that could seriously impact that blogger’s life (and finances, if he or she has to hire an attorney)? I assume that in some cases the evidence will be more obvious that in others — the blogs that I somewhat derisively refer to as “sunshine pumpers”, because they never have a negative thing to say about any product or service they mention, should probably be a bit worried that they will come under intense FTC scrutiny sooner or later. But what about the rest of us?

I’ll probably take the safe approach and disclose on everything that might even look like an endorsement, unless some other standard develops out in the blogosphere and the FTC seems okay with it.  Even if I just say that I’m not being compensated in any way for the content of a particular article — I may actually choose to actually say that and leave no doubt in anyone’s mind, rather than leave the FTC thinking that I forgot to disclaim and therefore should be fined.

But then again, if it looks like the FTC is clamping down really hard on this and innocent bloggers are being harassed, I probably will just stop blogging.  I can’t afford a potential $11,000 fine for possibly not wording a disclosure in just the manner the FTC might want to see it.

There is a larger issue here, though.  I’ve read a few articles from time to time that indicates that sometimes the major media, or even your local TV station or newspaper, will go out of their way to publish or broadcast any good news that comes their way that may involve one of their advertisers – and at the same time, they may scuttle bad news that potentially may offend a large advertiser (there was a consumer reporter that was fired recently because they reported some negative news about an advertiser, though I don’t recall the details anymore). Unfortunately, I didn’t save any of those links so you’ll either have to take my word for it (or not), or research the subject on your own. Still, I suspect there’s a lot more examples of hidden “compensation” influencing your mainstream news than of it making a huge difference in what bloggers write.  Most bloggers tend to be a fairly independent bunch, and those that aren’t — the aforementioned “sunshine pumpers” — are usually pretty quickly recognized, and thereafter ignored.

So why are bloggers being singled out here? To me this smells to high heaven — it’s almost as though the big corporate media can do no wrong (or the FTC for some reason feels obliged not to mess with them) so they pick on the little guy that probably (in most cases) will innocently violate the rule because he or she doesn’t know any better. Of course, there also the matter of how vigorously the FTC will enforce the law — if they use the same standard they seem to apply to “Do-Not-Call” list violators, where only the largest fish get fried (that is, only those phone spammers with a record of numerous violations), then maybe we have nothing to worry about.  Still, it’s just one more regulation hanging over the head of bloggers, and I’m just concerned that innocent bloggers doing nothing more than using their freedom of speech and freedom of the press (if you consider a blog a form of “the press”) may innocently step on the FTC’s tripwire. Nope, can’t say as I like this much, but for now I’m just going to take a “wait and see” stance and see how this plays out.

EDIT: An article at the Law.com Legal Blog Watch entitled, “The FTC Blog Rules: Overbroad or Overblown?“, seems to indicate that this is not as big an issue as I may have originally thought.  That article gives a very good perspective on the situation. If I am reading correctly, it seems that as long as you disclose that you’ve received a freebie you’re probably okay (but please read the original article, because I’m probably over-simplifying that a bit, and in any case I am not a lawyer so you shouldn’t be looking to me for legal advice). I really don’t object to disclosure as long as as other bloggers are required to do it as well. It only looks bad if one blogger is admitting he gets an occasional freebie, while others are taking free stuff without disclosing it, leading you to believe that maybe they actually went out and purchased the product or book with their own money (and that therefore, their reviews are somehow more “objective”). I think that what the FTC is really wanting to weed out is sites that offer glowing reciews on a quid pro quo basis, where the blogger gets paid (either with money or with free stuff) for writing reviews in which “never is heard a discouraging word.” That is a different situation from a blogger that may accept occasional free stuff but then writes about it honestly.  In some cases it may be hard to tell the difference (particularly if the reviewer genuinely likes a product or book) but hopefully what the FTC will be looking for is patterns — if every product or book is written about as if it’s the greatest thing ever, then one probably should wonder about that blogger’s integrity.

Cover of FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions

FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions by Alex Robar (Packt Publishing) explains how to set up, configure, and maintain a powerful VoIP PBX using FreePBX.  For those not familiar with FreePBX, it’s a “front end” for the Asterisk PBX software. Asterisk can be thought of as the “engine” that runs the PBX, but FreePBX is the user interface.  It basically saves you the effort of writing Asterisk configuration files and dial plans by hand.  Instead, you enter all the requisite information in FreePBX’s web-based GUI, and then when you apply the configuration changes (by clicking an orange bar at the top of the screen), FreePBX (re)writes the Asterisk dial plan and configuration files on the fly. This means that making significant changes to the call flow within the PBX, or adding new extensions or trunks, can be accomplished in a matter of seconds or minutes. It also means that you can have a fully functional PBX up and running in a few hours (perhaps even less than an hour if you’re exceptionally quick and it’s not your first installation).

As I like to do in reviews, before I begin I’ll give you a thumbnail description of what’s in each chapter (condensed from information on the Packt Publishing web site):

• Chapter 1: Installing FreePBX – Installing FreePBX on CentOS 5.2 or Ubuntu Server 8.10
• Chapter 2: Module Maintenance – how to install and update modules
• Chapter 3: Devices and Extensions – explains the difference between Extensions mode and DeviceAndUser mode, and explains how to set up extensions and users. Also explains the different types of endpoints, and how to set up voicemail for a user or extension
• Chapter 4: Trunks – discusses trunk types, setting up a new trunk, and checking trunk status
• Chapter 5: Basic Call Targets – explains various ways to terminate calls on a FreePBX system, including Extension and Voicemail, Ring Groups, Conferences, Day Night Mode, and Phonebook Directory
• Chapter 6: Advanced Call Targets – discusses Queues, Time conditions, and the setup of an IVR (Digital Receptionist)
• Chapter 7: Call Routing – discusses Inbound routing, Follow Me and the VmX Locater, and Outbound routing and Least Cost Routing
• Chapter 8: Recording Calls – focuses on everything you need to know about recording calls that pass through a FreePBX system
• Chapter 9: Personalizing Your PBX – discusses Custom Music on Hold, Custom voice prompts, Directory search options, Customizing feature codes, Callback, Direct Inward System Access (DISA), CallerID Lookup Sources, PIN Sets, Misc applications, and Misc Destinations
• Chapter 10: System Protection, Backup and Restoration – how to protect your system against failure, discussing both hardware methods (a good UPS and redundancy) and backups and restoration
• Chapter 11: Security and Access Control – explains how to upgrade your operating system and Asterisk, plus various ways to secure your system against attacks

There are also four appendices:

• Appendix A: FreePBX Modules
• Appendix B: Feature Codes
• Appendix C: Voicemail.conf Options
• Appendix D: Common Trunk Configurations

I’m coming from a slightly different place in my review of this book than with other books I’ve reviewed. In this case I’ve already very familiar with the subject material, having helped set up and configure a FreePBX system that belongs to another member of my family. I was a bit afraid that because I’m already so familiar with the subject, I’d find several glaring errors or oversights. Happily, that proved not to be the case – this book is a good, solid treatment of setting up and configuring a FreePBX system. In fact, the title should have been “How to set up and maintain a FreePBX system”, because that’s exactly what this book explains.

The first thing that impressed me about this book is that there was no “filler” material. Very often, with technical books, the author really only has about 75 to 100 pages of actual material, but because publishers like to publish books that have somewhere around a couple hundred pages, the author will flesh out the book with a history of the software, a profile of the developers, comparisons with competing products, and (if they are really desperate for material) a history of the Internet. That is not the case here. After a very short preface, the author jumps right into the subject material, starting with how to install FreePBX and then continuing through subsequent chapters with virtually everything you need to know about configuration. While not every chapter may be meaningful to every reader (personally, I’ve never had the need to record a call — so far — but it’s nice to know that FreePBX can do it), the book at least touches on all the major features of FreePBX.

If I had to make one criticism of the book, it’s that in some places it reads a little bit too much like an instruction manual. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because FreePBX has badly needed a good manual to assist first time users in getting it set up and running. This is the manual that should have come with FreePBX. That said, the author really doesn’t touch some of the problems frequently encountered by new users. For example, in the discussion of SIP endpoints, he notes that “SIP can be problematic when traversing firewalls and other NAT devices” and that “Configuration can be particularly troublesome if both the endpoint and the FreePBX system are behind their own firewalls” (p. 44). And there he leaves the reader hanging. There is no discussion of how to overcome the problem, nor is there a pointer to the FreePBX FAQ’s or How-To’s anywhere in the book. While many readers may not encounter this issue, a fair number will, and it would have been nice if they’d been thrown a bone, if only in the form of a pointer to the FreePBX page that addresses the issue.

In my opinion, perhaps the biggest omission is in the discussion of Trunk setup in Chapter 4. This was really the only chapter in which I got the distinct feeling that the author may have been in just a bit over his head, and perhaps did not fully grasp the subject matter covered in the chapter. Not only are there errors in his examples of dial pattern usage (p. 81 – under no circumstances would you use two pipe characters in the same dial pattern, as is shown for some of the toll-free number examples), but when discussing IAX2 and SIP trunks (p. 83), only cursory information is given about how to populate the PEER details and USER details fields. Nor is it explained that with many commercial VoIP providers, the USER context and USER details fields are not used, and should be left blank. However, in the author’s defense, I suspect that I understand why this may have happened — there probably aren’t ten people on the face of the earth that can give you a full explanation of all the options that could possibly be used in the trunk PEER and USER details fields, and when and how each option should be used. Trunk configuration is probably the most difficult part of setting up FreePBX, precisely because there’s no definitive guide on how to do it correctly. In most cases, I suspect that finding the correct options to use with any particular provider is a matter of trial and error — you make educated guesses about which options might be needed and how they should be configured, and if you find a combination that works, perhaps you post it so that others can use it. Some of the known working trunk configuration settings appear in Appendix D of the book, but there are more sample configurations available at the FreePBX web site.

I only mention this because I was hopeful that maybe someone would finally provide a really good how-to on setting up FreePBX trunks, since this is something that almost always confounds new users, and even causes experienced users to get a few (more) gray hairs on occasion. Had I been writing such a book, and had I really understood the subject, I might have given several pages to the subject of trunk configuration in general, and PEER and USER details in particular, not just a few cursory paragraphs. On the other hand, most users will probably seek out a tested and working trunk configuration for whatever provider(s) they use.  It’s not as though there isn’t any online help on the subject, but — and this is another minor criticism — for some reason the book barely mentions the availability of online help (for example, unless I missed it there is no specific mention of the FreePBX How-Tos that address several of the issues encountered by new users). This is why I say that at times the book reads like an instruction manual — it gives you all the basics, but seldom touches the “edge cases”, the little quirks and problems that may be encountered by a significant subset of users, but not by all.

However, I don’t want to leave you with the idea that this book is simply a rehash of information that could be found online — even if that were the case, it presents that information in a logical manner that is easily understandable by the reader. But, many essential functions of maintaining a FreePBX system happen outside of the FreePBX interface. For example, you cannot update your operating system or Asterisk from within the FreePBX GUI, but the book explains how to do both.  Chapters 10 and 11 (on System Protection, Backup and Restoration, and Security and Access Control) deal with functions that are at least partially handled outside of FreePBX.  In some instances the author provides useful shell scripts that automate particular tasks (for example, deleting old, outdated backups to avoid filling up the hard drive). And in many cases, the book does explain things that new users need to know, but might not know that they need to know — for example, the explanation of Codecs and the penalty involved (both in terms of system performance and call latency) in transcoding between codecs.

Anyway, the bottom line is this: Let’s say your boss wants you to set up a new office phone system using Asterisk, and gives you a couple of weeks to do it. If you have no prior experience with Asterisk, you will almost certainly want to use FreePBX (the alternative is writing dial plans and configuration files by hand, and trust me, you don’t want to do that unless you are the sort of person who enjoys writing source code for major projects, and even then you probably don’t want to do it if you’re under any sort of time deadline). And if you’re going to use FreePBX, and you don’t want to spend hours and even days ferreting out information on the Internet, you need this book. Get your boss to buy it (there’s even an e-book version if you need it right now), then just follow the instructions, chapter by chapter. In a few days time, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a FreePBX expert.  That’s partly because FreePBX is so easy to use in the first place, but also because the book tells you pretty much everything you need to know, in a very understandable manner. If you get stuck, help is available at the FreePBX web site and at other various locations on the Internet.

If you are a long-time FreePBX user, you may find that you already know much of what’s in this book, but then again it might surprise you how much can still be learned.  For example, I found several good suggestions for adding additional security to a FreePBX system in Chapter 11 of the book — and let’s face it, many of us are probably a bit lax about securing our systems to the greatest possible extent (and that could be a very costly mistake).

One other point I should make — as the title of the book implies, it deals with a particular version of FreePBX, namely version 2.5.  Of course, as so often happens with a book about software, the ink is barely dry on the paper when a new version comes out.  FreePBX 2.6 has already been offered as a release candidate, and beta versions of FreePBX 3.0 are being made available.  From a user’s standpoint, version 2.6 will be nearly identical to 2.5 – there may be a few added options and such, but for the most part they are not things that you would need to worry about, or that would detract from the accuracy of this book.  However, FreePBX 3.0 will be a major rewrite, but it’s only available in an early beta version, and unless you are an experimenter that wants to be on the bleeding edge, you don’t want it yet.  Whenever you do move to FreePBX version 3.0 — and I’d be very surprised if a full release version is much closer than a year away — much of what you’ve learned about FreePBX 2.5 and subsequent versions will still be applicable (and also, I suspect that people will be using FreePBX 2.x versions for quite some time to come).

FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions by Alex Robar (Packt Publishing link)

Disclosure:  I have not been and will not be paid anything for writing this article, and I do not receive any commission or other compensation from sales of this book, and the links in this article are not affiliate links (that is, I do not get paid anything because you click on a link, even if the link goes to the publisher’s site).  I did, however, receive a complementary (free) review copy of the book from the publisher, for which I am most grateful – but apparently the Federal Trade Commission considers that “compensation”, which bloggers are now required to disclose. I can only say that I would not write a good review of a sucky book just because I got a free copy (I can’t be bought in that manner, and even if I could, I wouldn’t sell myself out that cheaply!) but still, the FTC apparently wants you to know that I got “compensated” with a free book.

I guess it all depends on your point of view.  If you read this MLive.com article, you’ll get the background on this story, in case you haven’t heard it already (it was fairly big news here in Michigan, but I don’t know if it played across the nation). You might also want to skim the comments left by readers of the article, which actually give you a better idea of why this guy was so controversial.

The anti-choice people have a real problem here.  On the one hand I’m sure they’d like to portray the victim as a martyr, if only to discourage any future attacks against pro-life/anti-choice protesters.  At least in theory, it’s a deterrent to harm from your opponents to say that “if you kill one of ours, you make us stronger.” The problem in this particular case was that the victim, by many accounts, allegedly wasn’t a particularly nice guy. For those who like to ask “What would Jesus do?”, I somehow can’t imagine Jesus shoving graphic photos of aborted babies in the faces of small children going to or from school. Every movement has its looney fringe, and if the pro-life folks every hope to be taken seriously, they ought to distance themselves from those whose actions harm their cause.  Unfortunately, we seem to be living in an age when those on the fringes seem to get all the attention, due to the apparent lack of any sort of journalistic standards in this country.

As a side note, it amazes me that the FCC is still mulling over whether that half second shot of Janet Jackson’s breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show was indecent, because kids might have seen it, but they don’t seem to have any problem with kids seeing ghastly photos of violence of any kind, whether real or manufactured. We REALLY need to have a serious dialog about what is truly indecent in this country. I don’t notice European children becoming particularly maladjusted because they live in areas where it’s not considered gross indecency to see certain parts of the anatomy.  In any case, if it were up to me, I’d say that showing pictures of dead babies (or dead kittens or puppies, for that matter) to small children is indecent.  If letting a child see a female breast might, in theory, cause them to grow up to be a sex pervert, then doesn’t it follow that letting them see photos of aborted babies might cause them to grow up to be child abusers? Just asking — I’m trying to understand the logic here, and as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, the debate over abortion is not one that is likely to go away soon, despite the fact that the Supreme Court supposedly settled the matter decades ago.  Most thinking people have their views on the subject, and many are confused.  A while back, the Gallup Poll reported that 51 percent of Americans now identify themselves as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice.” I suspect that as the “religious right” falls out of favor, more people will be willing to voice their qualms over abortion.  I’ve thought for a long time that the far right crowd has actually done a disservice to the pro-life cause, because people who would normally feel queasy about abortion (but who don’t hold a strong view – that is, it’s not a major issue for them) have been a bit reluctant to speak their viewpoint, for fear of being lumped in with the lunatics and terrorists that are on the fringe of the anti-abortion movement.  As the loonies become more marginalized, I think people will be more willing to say, “hey, maybe that really is a baby that’s being killed” – at least when it’s a late-term abortion.

The real problem is that the subject cannot be discussed openly and honestly because the two sides each have extremists that have a financial interest in their respective positions.  Consider this:

On the pro-abortion side, there are abortionists that are making a career out of ending the life of unborn children.  They certainly want to see abortion legal.  Then there are all the organizations like Planned Parenthood, who get money from various sources (maybe you, if you contribute to the United Way and your local United Way supports Planned Parenthood) to offer “family planning” services, which include abortions and/or abortion referrals. And there are other pro-abortion organizations as well.

On the anti-choice side (yes, I am deliberately using the terms most pejorative to each position) you have many of the churches and religious organizations.  The interest of the church should be obvious – the more children a churchgoing family has, the more potential church members in a couple decades or so. For the church, banning abortion (and perhaps birth control) is like an investment in the future – more folks to warm pews and put money in the passing collection plate. But in addition, many church organizations and other anti-choice organizations share an interest with some of the more militant pro-abortion folks.

That interest is fundraising potential.  Every fundamentalist televangelist knows that a mailing with pictures of cute children spared from “the evils of abortion” is a goldmine – the sheep will mail in their money and sign the “petition opposing abortion.” After the mail arrives, the checks are cashed and more often than not, the petitions go into the nearest dumpster (probably after being shredded, lest “20/20″ or “60 minutes” find them).  On the pro-abortion side, invoking the image of coat-hangers and back alley abortions is a sure fund-raiser. Both sides take the most extreme positions and refuse to admit that there could ever be any middle ground – either all abortions must be legal or all abortions must be banned.  They know how to play to their respective audiences. Of course, the average American is nowhere near as sure about the subject, but then the average American probably isn’t writing checks to either of those types of organizations.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that there’s no moral issue involved here – what I do mean to say is that when the people at the fringes are doing all the shouting, it’s no wonder we can’t broach the subject without it becoming a red-hot issue. And worse yet, each group tries to inject themselves into the legislative process, throwing their support behind candidates based only on this one issue, as if it were the only issue that mattered.

Well, I have a news flash for the extremists – there ARE other issues that are far more important.  Like war, for example, or hunger, or health care.  Do you really think it’s moral to fight to bring a child into the world, only to see them maimed or hungry or diseased and not give a damn? And do you think it’s right to fight for the right of a woman to choose abortion as a form of birth control without giving any consideration to the serious psychological damage that many women suffer post-abortion (not to mention that in some cases, women have suffered actual physical injury – remember, if a doctor is willing to take the life of an unborn baby, chances are he doesn’t really care all that much about the life of the mother, either).

In the political arena, the Democrats pander to the pro-abortion crowd, and the Republican pander to the anti-choice crowd.  And make no mistake, it IS mostly pandering.  They will make speeches at “prayer breakfasts” and other gatherings and make it sound like they’re really concerned about the issue.  Then they go back to Washington and do pretty much nothing – maybe a few token gestures, but nothing has really changed since Roe vs. Wade.  The very mis-named “religious right” (who in reality, are not all that religious and seldom right) in particular seems to live in the fantasy world where if only the Republicans has a majority in the government, they would end abortion once and for all.  They just don’t get it that for most Republican members of congress, abortion is probably less of a concern than who won that 2004 Super Bowl. Meanwhile they continue to help put lousy candidates in office just because that candidate will proclaim that they are “pro-life.”

I’m not saying that we don’t need to have a serious discussion of this issue… but I just wish the news media would stop running to the extremists for the sound bytes.  The fundamentalists and the abortion-rights groups do NOT represent most Americans, and in my opinion they do what they do mostly for the money, and because it gives their leadership a sense of power (just because you get to hobnob with politicians doesn’t make you right!).

There is one other point that is seldom brought up in the abortion debate.  That is, abortion would probably not be nearly so popular these days if the family courts weren’t so anti-male.  Ask any guy that’s ever been through a divorce and unless he was extremely lucky (or there were no minor children at the time of the divorce) he’ll have horror stories about how the family court and/or the mother of his children screwed him over.  Almost every guy has heard these stories – young men hear them from the older males in their families, or from other older men they know – so if their girlfriend gets pregnant, many times the young man will encourage her to have an abortion, out of fear of financial ruin (and the possibly of having to do jail time, and/or live in squalor if the court demands more than he can provide).  For the prospective father, it’s often (at least in part) a financial decision – but before you think too harshly of him, remember that it takes two to create a child, and the family courts seldom penalize the mother to the same degree they do the father.  If the anti-abortion organizations really cared about these unborn children, they might set up funds to at least help take some of the burden off the young fathers – but of course that would come into conflict with some of their other values, which basically seem to be that once you’re born they don’t care what happens to you, because they certainly won’t lift a finger to help. Not to mention that those running the anti-abortion organization might not be able to live the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed.

Now of course, if you have ever been involved with an anti-abortion organization you will know that their answer is adoption.  So rather than putting a poor woman through the psychological trauma of abortion, they’d rather see her go through the trauma of giving up her baby.  I will grant that most folks would say that the latter is far less traumatic, and I’d tend to agree although I speak from an uninformed position, because I’m not a female. But here’s the point – who’s likely to adopt the child?  Well, many of these pro-life organizations will try to get the child into a good “faith-based” family unit (that’s an euphemism for “fundamentalist religious nutjobs” in too many cases).  So guess what – the child is likely to be raised in such a way that he or she will because a pew-warmer and collection-plate contributor when he or she grows up.  Yes, folks, there’s a reason church groups get behind those organizations – an unwed mother might not raise her child “in the faith” but the rich fundamentalists who can afford to adopt a baby probably will. I don’t mean to imply that all children that are adopted through these agencies wind up in the hands of religious fundamentalist parents, but that may be only because there aren’t enough to go around.

In this article, I have deliberately tried to paint a somewhat negative picture of both sides, just to cause you to think.  I will tell you what I believe, but it shouldn’t matter what I believe because I am not trying to be anyone’s moral authority.  That said, I believe that the Bible is entirely silent on when “life” or “the soul” or whatever you want to call it enters the body of the unborn baby – you can torture some verses to try and make the Bible take a position, but I can give you a more plausible alternate rendering for any of the verses commonly used (whether you might accept it or not is another matter).  So basically, the fundamentalists are arguing their beliefs, and it’s a belief system that’s been imposed by the church and not by the Bible, which (to them, anyway) ought to be an important distinction. That said, the fact that we don’t know for sure ought to give us pause – if we feel we can destroy human life for the sake of convenience, that cheapens all human life. So I do think adoption is preferable to abortion, and that abortion should be very rare, an option of last resort for a serious medical problem, not something to be done lightly or as a matter of convenience.

However there is also the question of whether any one particular group’s beliefs on the subject ought to be the law that everyone is obliged to follow.  The fact that the religious fundamentalists are so adamant that protection of life ought to be codified in law scares me a bit, because if they can get that part of their beliefs imposed on everyone, what else will they try to impose on us? Some Christian fundamentalists are nearly as bad as the most extreme fundamentalists in the Middle East, and think that anyone who does not believe as they do is not worthy of any rights, and certainly not any respect for their conflicting beliefs.  I understand that they believe that abortion is murder, and that you don’t compromise on murder.  But just because they believe that doesn’t necessarily make it so! Many others believe that a soul is eternal, and that it cannot be destroyed, and that every human soul experiences multiple lifetimes.  Therefore, if deprived of the chance to take human form because the mother has an abortion, the soul will either move on and be born of another mother, or in some rare cases will actually wait until the same mother is ready and come back again at a later time, to be born in a different body. You can understand that those who hold to the latter beliefs would not see abortion in the same way as those who might believe that a soul only gets one chance at life – and neither group can “prove” they are right.

The purpose of this article has been to cause you to think more deeply about the subject.  Personally, I would wish that abortion were very rare, something that most women would never even consider.  But you cannot legislate what someone believes, and when you try to legislate morality you often run into trouble because not everyone agrees what is moral, therefore resulting in (usually) the “tyranny of the majority”, where the majority imposes its will and beliefs on the dissenting minority, or (sometimes) the imposition of the beliefs of a vocal minority on the majority. I also wish that the protestors on both sides would try to be considerate of those on the other side — if Jesus said to love your enemies, doesn’t that mean you should not be shoving offensive photos in their faces? And doesn’t that mean that maybe the prospective mother ought to be fully informed about what might happen after an abortion (including having dreams/nightmares about the baby they carried) instead of whatever propaganda the pro-abortion folks are handing out?  And shouldn’t the pro-abortion organizations be more upfront about the history of their movement and the real reasons it was started, including the beliefs of some of the founders?

There are times you want to say “a pox on both your houses” but then I realize that you can’t judge any movement by its most extreme supporters.  But in case you have been hiding under a rock during the last week, the lack of good old-fashioned civility is becoming a real issue, and I think it’s high time that the news media stop portraying the outspoken extremists as if they were representative of the majority of the members of a movement. And, in my opinion, if a person is on the extreme fringe of a movement, then that person’s untimely death should not cause him to attain martyr status. Unfortunately, parts of the media seem to have been taken over by lying scoundrels who’ll say anything, and give air time to any extremist in order to get ratings, thus pouring gasoline on the smouldering fire of emotions in this country. But that’s another issue, perhaps for another post someday.

I did not write the following article – it’s extracted from the book “FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions” by Alex Robar, published by Packt Publishing. You can tell I didn’t write it because of all the fancy formatting in the article (including one table that I simply can’t get to render as intended on this WordPress blog – it’s still readable but looks a little funny)! Packt Publishing provided it and gave me the okay to publish it, and I did feel it might be of interest to at least some readers of this blog. But I will tell you up front that you should not read this article if a) you have an objection to small embedded ads for the book in the article (these were included in the article, and while I don’t object to including them I think maybe three copies of the same ad is a bit excessive, but they’re small and fairly unobtrusive so I let it slide this time), or b) if you feel it is a conflict of interest that I might receive a copy of this book for review purposes, though I have not so far. I’ve been waiting for this book to come out ever since I heard (via the author’s Twitter feed) that it was under development, hoping to be able to review it, because there is just so much functionality built into FreePBX and Asterisk, and I think many potential users just don’t understand how capable FreePBX really is.

One reason I thought this article might be of interest is because we’ve all been in the situation where we’ve wished we had a recording of that phone call we just completed.  Asterisk and FreePBX allows you to make such recordings easily, but few people actually use that built-in ability, I think primarily because many of us don’t know how to set it up. This article tells you just about everything you could possibly want to know about recording calls under Asterisk and FreePBX, and also provides a sample of the type of information you’ll likely find in the book. I don’t want to pre-write my review here (assuming I will get a copy of the book at some point) so that’s all I’ll say for the moment, but if you use FreePBX I hope you learn something from this article. So without further ado…

Recording Calls in FreePBX 2.5

Asterisk has a wonderful, built-in ability to record calls. No additional software is required to make this happen. When Asterisk records a call, both sides of the call are recorded and written out to a file for playback on a computer. Call recording is often performed in call centers to ensure call quality, or to keep calls for later review, should the need arise. Asterisk provides the ability to record all of the calls, or to selectively record calls.

In this article, we will look the following:

• General recording options
• Recording calls to extensions
• Recording calls to queues
• Recording calls to conferences
• Maintaining call recordings

Before enabling call recording for your PBX, make sure that you are aware of the legalities surrounding call recordings and privacy laws. Call recordings are prohibited in certain places, unless the caller is told that the call will be recorded. For example, in the state of California all of the parties on the call must consent to the call being recorded before it begins. Playing back a message stating that the call is being recorded prior to the call being answered is considered a valid form of consent.

Recording formats

FreePBX allows calls to be recorded in the following formats:

• WAV
• WAV49
• ULAW
• ALAW
• SLN
• GSM

Each format has its own ratio of file size to recording quality, and certain formats will not play on all of the computers. A comparison between all of the available formats is as follows:

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In general, the rule of thumb for recording will be the same as it is for selecting the codec that a trunk or extension will use: try to make everything match. If all of the calls are using the GSM codec, then it would be safe to record those calls in the GSM format. A system that has all of the calls in G.711 ULAW format would be put under an unnecessary amount of stress to record in GSM format. If transcoding is required (for example, limited disk space dictates the use of GSM recordings), be sure to size the resources of the system accordingly in order to allow the additional load.

General call recording options

FreePBX has several settings that govern the global operation of call recording. These settings determine if call recording should be globally enabled or disabled, which format to record calls in, and a command to run after a call has been recorded (if desired).

In order to access the global options, click on General Settings in the navigation menu on the left as shown in the following screenshot:

The Call Recording section has the settings that we are interested in:

The Extension Recording Override option allows all user-level automatic call recording to be disabled. A user can be set up to record all of the calls (which will be discussed shortly). If this option is set to Enabled, all of the user settings will be ignored and calls will not be recorded automatically. Note that this option neither affects recording settings for queues or conferences, which can be set up in order to record all of the calls, nor does it affect on-demand recording. This setting only affects users who have been set up to automatically record all of the calls. If this field is set to Disabled then the user-level recording options will be respected.

The Call recording format field allows us to change the format of the call in which it will be stored. The default value is wav, but can be changed to WAV (WAV49—a GSM file stored as a wav), ulaw, alaw, sln, gsm, and g729. More information on recording formats can be found earlier in this article in the Recording formats section.

Recording calls to extensions

FreePBX allows all of the calls to a particular user to be recorded, or for calls to be selectively recorded. FreePBX allows the choice between recording only incoming calls, only outgoing calls, or both.

In order to set up call recording for a particular user, click on Users or Extensions in the navigation bar on the left (this depends on the operational mode in which FreePBX is running.

Click on the name of the user you wish to edit and scroll down to the Recording Options section:

The Record Incoming and Record Outgoing settings can be configured as On Demand, Always, or Never.

When the On Demand option is selected, the user can dial *1 during a call to start recording the call. *1 can be dialed again to stop recording the call. The on demand toggle only lasts for the current call. In order to record the next call, the user would have to dial *1 again.

If these options are set to Always, then all of the calls in the selected direction will be recorded. When Always is selected, pressing *1 will not stop call recording.

If these options are set to Never, then no calls in the selected direction will be recorded. When Never is selected, pressing *1 will not start recording.

Be sure to click on the Submit button, followed by the orange-colored Apply Configuration Changes bar at the top of the screen in order to save any changes made to the recording settings.

Recording calls to queues

All the calls to a particular queue can be recorded. This is often used on larger call queues for later call review by management, or to resolve disputes about what was said on a particular call. In order to record all of the calls that are picked up out of a particular queue, click on the Queues link under the Inbound Call Control menu on the left as shown in the following screenshot:

Click on the name of the queue in the menu on the right, which needs call recording enabled:

Under Queue Options, the Call Recording drop-down menu can be changed to wav49, wav, and gsm.

Select the desired recording format, click on the Submit Changes button, and click on the orange-colored Apply Configuration Changes bar in order to enable recording on the queue.

Note that queues tend to have a high volume of calls. It is important to select an appropriate call recording format, and to ensure that recordings are maintained and cleaned up periodically. More information on recording formats can be found earlier in the Recording formats section of this article. Recording maintenance is discussed later in this article in the Maintaining call recordings section.

Configure, deploy, and maintain an enterprise-class VoIP PBX Fully configure an Asterisk PBX without editing the individual text-based configuration files Add enterprise-class features such as voicemail, least-cost routing, and digital receptionists to your system Secure your PBX against intrusion by managing MySQL passwords, FreePBX administrative accounts, account permissions, and unauthenticated calls Packed with step-by-step instructions, examples, screenshots, and diagrams http://www.packtpub.com/freepbx-2-5-powerful-telephony-solutions/book

Recording calls to conferences

All of the calls to a particular conference room can be recorded. All of the members of the conference will be recorded and merged into a single file. In order to enable call recordings for a particular conference, select Conferences from the Internal Options & Configuration menu on the left as shown in the following screenshot:

Select the conference room that should have recording enabled from the menu on the right:

Under Conference Options, the Record Conference drop-down menu will turn recording on or off:

Selecting Yes will record the entire conference (from the time the first member joins) in WAV format (more information on the WAV format can be found earlier in this article in the Recording formats section). Selecting a different format to record the conference in is not currently supported. Once Yes has been selected from the Record Conference drop-down menu, click on the Submit Changes button followed by the orange-colored Apply Configuration Changes button in order to enable call recordings for the conference.

Maintaining call recordings

It is worth noting that call recordings can be quite large. If left unattended, a PBX that automatically records all of the calls will eventually fill up the entire available hard disk space and stop processing calls. It is important to have a maintenance strategy for dealing with call recordings in order to avoid this. While third-party tools exist to maintain recordings, adequate maintenance can often be performed with simple shell scripts.

The most common way of maintaining call recordings is to automate the deletion of recordings that are older than a certain time frame. The following script called OldRecordingDeletion.sh will remove all of the recordings older than 14 days.

#!/bin/bash

# Change this path to reflect your recording storage
# location
RECORDINGS=/var/spool/asterisk/monitor

# Change this number to reflect the maximum age of call
# recordings
RECORDINGEXPIRY=14

# Change this number to reflect the maximum age of the
# deletion logs
LOGEXPIRY=365

# Current date
DATE=`date`

# Delete recordings older than $EXPIRY days
find $RECORDINGS -mtime +$EXPIRY -exec rm -rfv > removal-$DATE.log

# Delete log files older than $LOGEXPRY
find . -mtime +$LOGEXPIRY -exec rm -rf

It is best to run a script like this once a day. Adding the following line to cron will execute the script from the /etc/recordingdeletion file once daily at 5:00 a.m.:

0 5 * * * /etc/recordingdeletion/OldRecordingDeletion.sh

More information on using the cron system can be found later in this article in the Using cron section.

Another possible method of maintaining recordings is to find the longest calls, and only keep them (since the longer calls are often the calls that prove problematic). The script below (SmallRecordingDeletion.sh) will delete all of the recordings under 15 MB.

The following script is written for maintaining recordings of a single format, and defaults to removing recordings that are less than 15 megabytes in size. This is equivalent to about 15 minutes of calls that are recorded in WAV, ULAW, ALAW, or SLN format. For WAV49 or GSM formats, recordings in a 15 megabyte file would contain over two hours of call time. For these formats, the equivalent value for 15 minutes of talk time is about 1.5 megabytes. If recordings are in multiple formats (for example, queues are recorded in GSM format while conferences are in WAV format), the script would need to be modified to only remove a specific format.

#!/bin/bash

# Change this path to reflect your recording storage
# location
RECORDINGS=/var/spool/asterisk/monitor

# Change this number to reflect the minimum size of
# recordings
RECORDINGSIZE=15

# Change this number to reflect the maximum age of the
# deletion logs
LOGEXPIRY=365

# Current date
DATE=`date`

# Delete recordings older than $EXPIRY days
find $RECORDINGS -size -$RECORDINGSIZE M -exec rm -rfv > removal-$DATE.log

# Delete log files older than $LOGEXPRY
find . -mtime +$LOGEXPIRY -exec rm -rf

This script should also be run once per day. Adding the following line to cron will execute the script from /etc/recordingdeletion once daily at 5:00 a.m.:

0 5 * * * /etc/recordingdeletion/SmallRecordingDeletion.sh

Using cron

The cron system allows scheduled executions of any command that can be run from the server’s command line. The easiest way to add an entry to cron is to edit the crontab file using the following command:

crontab -e

If the crontab file has not been edited previously, crontab manager may ask which editor to use by providing a numbered list such as the one below:

Select an editor. To change later, run 'select-editor'.
 1. /usr/bin/vim.tiny
 2. /bin/ed
 3. /bin/nano <---- easiest

Press the number that corresponds with the desired editor and then press the Enter key. If crontab has not previously been used, then a blank text file will be opened for editing. If the file has previously been edited, then all of the existing entries will be shown in the text editor.

In order to add a new entry to the file, simply place your cursor at the end of the file (below all other text) and start typing. A crontab entry should use the following syntax: (min) (hour) (day) (month) (dayofweek) (command). Each token can be replaced as follows:

• (min) can be replaced with the minute when the command should be run. For example, if the command is to be run at 2:30 a.m., enter 30 for the minute. Valid values are any whole numbers between zero and 59.
• (hour) should be replaced with the hour when the command should be run. For the previous example, running a command at 2:30 a.m. would replace (hour) with 2. Valid values are any whole numbers between zero and 23.
• (day) should be replaced with the day of the month that the command should be run on. For example, to run a command on July 20th, enter 20. Valid values are whole numbers between one and 31. Note that the system will not generate an error if the entered date does not exist (for example, entering a cron job to run on September 31st will not generate an error). If an invalid date is entered, the command will never run.
• (month) should be replaced with the number corresponding to the month that the command is to be run in. For example, to run the command on July 20 enter 7 (because July is the seventh month). Valid values are whole numbers between one and 12.
• (dayofweek) should be replaced with the number corresponding to the day of the week that the command should be run on. For example, to run a command on a Thursday, enter 4 (because counting from Sunday as day zero, Thursday is the fourth day of the week). Valid values are whole numbers between zero and seven. Sunday can either be zero or seven, cron will recognize both.
• (command) should be replaced with the shell command that is being run. As cron does not run under a particular shell, it has no environment variables and does not know the path to various system executables. The full path to a command must be entered. For example, in order to reboot the system each time the cron job is executed, the command would be /sbin/reboot now.

For any of the timing values (minute, hour, day, month, or day of week), an asterisk (*) can be used to represent all of the possible values. For example, the following cron entry would reload Asterisk’s configuration on the fifteenth minute of every hour:

15 * * * * /usr/sbin/asterisk -rx "reload"

A range of values can also be specified in order to execute a command within a specific time frame. For example, the cron entry below would reload Asterisk’s configuration once on the fifteenth minute of every hour, but only on business days:

15 * * * 1-5 /usr/sbin/asterisk -rx "reload"

It is also possible to specify a set of values using a comma (,). For example, the cron entry below would reload Asterisk’s configuration once per hour on the fifteenth minute of the hour, only during business hours (excluding lunch hour), and only on business days:

15 9,10,11,13,14,15,16,17 * * 1-5 /usr/sbin/asterisk -rx "reload"

The previous entries are a single cron entry and should be typed on a single line.

Finally, the forward slash (/) can be used to specify what is known as “step values”. Step values allow a command to be run a fraction of the amount of times it would be normally within a given time frame. For example, specifying 9-17/2 for the hour field would execute the command every two hours between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. instead of once per hour during that time frame. The following cron entry would reboot the server on the first day of every third month at 2:00 a.m.:

0 2 * */3 * /sbin/reboot now

Once the entry has been completed, save the file and close the text editor (the method to accomplish this is different based on which editor is being used). A message will be displayed indicating that the cron file has been updated with a new version:

crontab: installing new crontab

The schedule for cron entries can be changed any time by reopening the crontab file for editing.

Configure, deploy, and maintain an enterprise-class VoIP PBX Fully configure an Asterisk PBX without editing the individual text-based configuration files Add enterprise-class features such as voicemail, least-cost routing, and digital receptionists to your system Secure your PBX against intrusion by managing MySQL passwords, FreePBX administrative accounts, account permissions, and unauthenticated calls Packed with step-by-step instructions, examples, screenshots, and diagrams http://www.packtpub.com/freepbx-2-5-powerful-telephony-solutions/book

I never got into amateur radio, originally because of the Morse Code requirement, and by the time they finally dropped that ridiculous nonsense, I no longer had any interest (nor, frankly, the cash to buy the equipment, antennas, etc.). But I have friends who are hams, but I’ve never seen any of them doing anything like this (you’ll need to click on the link because I can’t seem to embed this video – either I’m doing it wrong, or there’s a bug in WordPress):

Yes, the subtitles (and what little bit of spoken audio can be heard) are in French, but you don’t have to understand the language to appreciate what’s being done here. This is the sort of thing that ham radio operators used to do waaaay back when, back in the days when they built most of their equipment at home rather than buying it from some equipment manufacturer (of course it probably helped a lot if they had access to a machine shop and other equipment). I think vacuum tubes were the last bit of technology I really understood (not that I would ever attempt to build one at home), although I’m not THAT nostalgic for them, since they had this nasty habit of burning out just when you were settling down to watch TV (and creating a whole service industry of TV repairmen – and yes, they were almost always men). Still, I have a feeling that if we are ever subjected to a major EMP (or perhaps a killer solar flare) that knocks out all the silicon-based electronics, the only equipment that will still function is the old stuff that uses vacuum tubes and discrete components, with nary a transistor or integrated circuit in sight!

Have you ever been in a situation where you want to extend a local network (or maybe an Internet connection) from one building to another that’s separated by some distance, say anywhere from several feet to a few hundred feet? Many people use wireless in this situation, and that’s a perfectly acceptable solution if it works, but it also brings with it a host of security issues. Any signal that is put into the airwaves is one that can potentially be intercepted, particularly if you’re not really familiar with wireless security. I’m not saying you should or should not use wireless, but I do know that some folks aren’t crazy about the idea. Also, there are distance limits on wireless links that can mean that no useable signal will be available where you want it.

Unfortunately, the only alternative to a wireless link between buildings is a physical link (if you ignore more esoteric alternatives that depend on both buildings getting their electrical service from the same power transformer) and there you have two choices, copper or fiber. Assuming you are going to bury a line between the two buildings, how do you know which to use?

I know there are people who would never recommend copper under any circumstances. The reason is that during electrical storms, there can be a difference in electrical potential between two buildings.  This can cause serious amounts of current to flow, especially if lightning strikes nearby, damaging equipment (and in an extreme case, possibly even starting a fire).  Even in cases where the equipment at the endpoints doesn’t seem damaged, the connection can turn very flakey after a lightning strike, with very high packet loss.

The only situation where you might get away with running underground Cat5e (or Cat 6, if you can find it) is to a very nearby building, and then only if you put very good approved lightning protection at both ends of the cable.  The further away the building, the more important that the lightning protectors become (and if the buildings get electrical power from different sources, such as different electrical transformers, then the lightning protection becomes even more essential), and of course good lightning protection costs money.  And even then, if lightning hits very close, it can fry the lightning protectors, meaning the Internet connection will likely be out of service until you can obtain and install replacement protectors.

One other problem to note:  You have probably heard that the theoretical maximum distance for a run of Cat5e/6 cable on a wired network is 100 meters.  That may be true indoors, in a dry environment.  It’s not always true when the cable runs underground and/or is partially exposed to outdoor climatic conditions.  On a run that’s close to the theoretical maximum in length, you may find that a connection that works beautifully during the cold winter months suddenly starts showing high packet loss during the heat and humidity of summer.

The alternative to Cat 5e/6 cable is fiber optic cable.  Fiber is a great alternative because it uses glass fibers rather than copper wire to carry the signals.  Since glass doesn’t conduct electricity, the only way lightning could ever affect it is in a direct strike, where it heats the ground so hot that the glass melts (this actually occasionally happens in areas with sand dunes, where the lightning creates glass sculptures by melting the sand into glass, but it’s very unlikely to happen on regular flat land).

The trouble with trying to use fiber is that just about everyone with any networking experience knows how to use Cat 5e or Cat 6 — you just plug it in to your equipment at each end, or if it doesn’t have plugs then you either use a tool to attach them, or your bring the wire to a modular jack and use a punchdown tool to make the connections (some lightning protectors have punchdown terminals as well).  You can cut the cat 5e or 6 cable to the exact length you need. It’s something many people are familiar with, whereas fiber may as well have been pulled out of an alien spacecraft for all anyone (outside of those in the telecommunications industry) seems to know about it.  If you go searching for pages on the Internet explaining how to install a fiber link between two buildings, good luck in finding anything useful!

Part of the probable reason there aren’t too many general how-tos on the subject is that there are so many variables — there are many types of fiber available, each of which is good for certain specific uses, with many different types of end connectors.  And then you need equipment at each end to connect the fiber to the wired network, and you can’t just run down to the local office supply or big box electronics store to find that. But don’t despair, because I’m going to tell you one way to set up a short range fiber optic link. The caveat here is that I am by no means an expert on this — I’ve been involved in an installation ONCE, but I learned a lot in the process.  Still, if you have questions that aren’t answered on this page, I’m probably not the guy to ask. But I figure that if you’re searching for online information on the subject, any information is better than none!

So let me start by telling you some things you need to know about fiber optic cable:

This fiber still worked! (Photo credit: Paul Timmins)

It comes in two varieties (that you are likely to encounter), singlemode and multimode.  Singlemode fiber usually has a yellow jacket (plastic coating, like the insulation on a copper wire) whereas multimode cable generally has an orange jacket.  For most short run applications (by that I mean distances measured in meters or feet, not kilometers or miles) you’ll use a paired multimode fiber (two fibers side by side, in a jacket that looks a bit like the type of electrical cord used with a table lamp, except the jacket is bright orange and it’s a lot smaller). If you’re a phone or cable company (or connecting to one) then you might have occasion to work with singlemode, but that’s not what we are talking about here. Singlemode is a lot more fragile than multimode – you can do this (photo at right) with multimode and it will probably still work (although anything remotely close to this tight of a bend is definitely NOT recommended – remember this is glass fiber that you’re bending, and if it breaks the cable becomes worthless!)

You can’t cut and splice fiber (unless you buy some really expen$ive supplies and equipment, and learn how to use them).  You buy the length you need, with the connectors at each end already attached.  If it’s too long, you coil up the excess (not TOO tightly) but you never cut it nor try to splice it, unless you have the specialized equipment that allows you to do so.

At each end, the fiber plugs into a device called a media converter. The media converter (or the SFP module that plugs into the converter — more on that in a moment) contains a laser, and a receiver.  It transmits on one fiber of a pair, and receives on the other.  The one thing you must never do, if you value your eyesight, is look into the laser while the unit is operating.  That also means you can’t plug a fiber cable into the media converter, then look into the other end of the fiber to see if it’s working.  If you think you might forget this important safety precaution, just try to remember that not looking into the laser is as important as not touching a live electrical line — and if that doesn’t scare you, take a course in reading Braille, because you’re probably going to need it.

It’s also possible to buy gigabit switches that can directly accept fiber.  This eliminates the need for a separate media converter at one or both ends, but such switches tend to be a bit on the expensive side, although they also tend to offer more ports than most typical home switches (24 ports, for example).  But there is sometimes a cost in terms of power consumption – for whatever reason, standalone media converters often tend to draw far less power than switches that have fiber ports.

Fiber is somewhat fragile, and it can break (and be rendered useless) if it is subjected to too much strain.  You can’t just pull it over a very long length without taping it to something else (that you’ll also be pulling) at regular intervals to relieve the strain. You can buy special, relatively inexpensive network pull string for the purpose, or if you don’t have any of that you can use any high tensile strength string (not twine, it breaks too easily, and avoid stretchy string because that sort of defeats the purpose – you want the string to help pull the fiber, not the other way around). The fiber I’ve seen needs to be inside something to protect it (no direct burial) – you can use cheap irrigation pipe for the purpose, as long as it’s large enough for the connectors at the ends to pull through (don’t try to be thrifty and undersize the pipe, but at the same time realize that fiber with the small LC connectors has plenty of room inside a standard one inch irrigation pipe, assuming you’re not pulling several multiple fiber pairs or other wires and cables). Also, you should use pulling lubricant on long pulls to prevent damage to the fiber jacket.

When you buy the fiber, it will have connectors attached at each end (at least it had better have, if you want to actually use it — don’t buy bulk cable that doesn’t have the connectors attached!).  These connectors usually have two-letter designations.  Popular types are LC (the smallest you’re likely to encounter, which makes it very popular these days), SC, and ST. The media converter (or switch) has to be able to accept the type of connectors your cable has. If your media converter has an ST connector and the cable has LC connectors, you’re out of luck.  Sometimes you can buy cable with different connectors on each end, so be careful that it matches your media converters.

If you want to know more about fiber on a technical level, see the Reference Guide To Fiber Optics.

SFPs and GBICs

According to Wikipedia:

A gigabit interface converter (GBIC) is a standard for transceivers, commonly used with Gigabit Ethernet and fibre channel. By offering a standard, hot swappable electrical interface, one gigabit ethernet port can support a wide range of physical media, from copper to long-wave single-mode optical fiber, at lengths of hundreds of kilometers.

The appeal of the GBIC standard in networking equipment, as opposed to fixed physical interface configurations, is its flexibility. Where multiple different optical technologies are in use, an administrator can purchase GBICs as needed, not in advance, and they can be the specific type needed for each link. This lowers the cost of the base system and gives the administrator far more flexibility. On the other hand if it is known that a switch will mostly have one port type (especially if that port type is copper) purchasing a switch with that port type built in will probably be cheaper and take up less space per port.

The GBIC standard is non-proprietary and is defined by the SFF Committee in document # SFF-8053i.

A variation of the GBIC called the mini-GBIC or SFP exists as well. It has the same functionality / modularity but in a smaller form factor.

(Source)

and

The small form-factor pluggable (SFP) is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for both telecommunication and data communications applications. It interfaces a network device mother board (for a switch, router, media converter or similar device) to a fiber optic or copper networking cable. It is a popular industry format supported by several network component vendors.

SFP transceivers are designed to support SONET, Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and other communications standards. The standard is expanding to SFP+ which will be able to support data rates up to 10.0 Gbit/s (that will include the data rates for 8 gigabit Fibre Channel, and 10GbE. SFP+ module versions for optics as well as copper are being introduced. In comparison to Xenpak, X2 or XFP type of modules, SFP+ modules leave some of the circuitry to be implemented on the host board instead of inside the module.^[1])

(Source)

Okay, in case you weren’t following along, a mini-GBIC, also known as a SFP, is a module that plugs into a media converter or a compatible switch.  What this means to you is that you can buy a media converter, then plug in the SFP that matches the type of fiber and connectors that you have.   So let’s say you have fiber with LC connectors – you get a SFP with LC connectors to match.  Now suppose that at some point you need to replace that fiber with some that has ST connectors – you don’t have to throw out the entire media converter or switch, but instead you just get a new SFP.  Not all media converters accept SFP’s, but many of the newer ones do.  Also, not every manufacturer’s SFP will work with every media converter – if you buy an SFP you have to make sure it’s compatible with the media converter (or switch) that you own.

If you go the SFP route, you have to make sure of three things:  That the connectors match the connectors on your fiber cable, that it’s intended for use with multimode rather than single-mode fiber, and that it’s for intermediate or short reach use (IR or SR — you may also find the designation SX or 1000Base-SX used to indicate a short to intermediate range SFP).  In particular, you don’t want one with long reach optics because unless you use fiber attenuators you’ll overload and probably burn out the receiver at the other end (also, there’s a much greater chance of eye damage if you accidentally glance at the laser). To give you an idea of the difference, the short range optics are generally specified for runs up to a few hundred meters in length, while long range optics have distances specified in kilometers (sometimes as much as 80 km or more!).

So lets say that you want to run a fiber optic cable between two buildings that are a reasonably short distance apart — what do you need?

The first thing you need is a pipe or conduit of some kind between the two buildings.  Irrigation pipe (the stuff you find at any home improvement store, or anyplace that sells underground lawn sprinkling supplies) is fine – remember you aren’t running anything electrical if all you are running is a fiber cable! The main thing is that the pipe or conduit that you use should be relatively smooth inside to minimize pulling resistance. Try to keep bends in the pipe to an absolute minimum. And yes, the pipe could be above ground as long as it’s sunlight resistant and not in a place subject to physical damage (but be aware that black pipe could get VERY hot in direct sunlight, so keep it out of the sun if at all possible). The purpose of the pipe or conduit is to protect the fiber. The pipe must be large enough for the connector (at the fiber cable’s end) to fit inside, with space to spare. If you have to splice sections of pipe together, the connectors may have a smaller inner diameter, so plan accordingly – you don’t want to get halfway through a pull and realize that the diameter at the splice point is too small to continue!

This article isn’t about burying pipe, but I will just suggest that you think about routing it far away from anyplace that people might be digging in the future, if at all possible — and if that’s not possible, then consider burying it as deep as possible, to minimize risk of backhoe failure (or on a farm, of getting plowed up!).

You need network pull string and electrical tape.  The string must be longer than the fiber cable – if it’s twice as long then you could pull just the string through the pipe to use for pulling (a good shop vac and a small wad of paper tied to the end of the string is often enough to get the string started through the pipe), and still have enough left on the far end to tape the fiber cable to the string for the entire length. Do that every few feet, making sure that there’s a little slack in the fiber (not too much) when the string is pulled tight. Be sure to tape the leading end of the fiber connector (with the protective cap on) firmly to the string so it can’t try to flip over or do something equally undesirable during the pull. Note that if you are also pulling any kind of wire through the pipe on the same pull, you could tape the fiber to the wire rather than a string, assuming the wire is strong enough to not stretch during the pull.

You need pulling lubricant — any electrical supply store sells this stuff. But note that this stuff can dissolve the adhesive on electrical tape (we found this out the hard way), so when you tape the cable to the string, try not to leave the adhesive side exposed.  The trouble is that to really do it right you should use plenty of pulling lubricant, yet at the same time if you do, if you taped carelessly then you may have issues with the tape not holding as it should. That’s not a reason to apply less lubricant, but rather a reason to use a little extra tape and to make your tape wraps nice and tight, so the lube can’t get between the layers of tape (especially at the very start of the pull).

We used some blue gel stuff called Ideal Aqua-Gel II and used a paintbrush to apply it liberally to the fiber cable, after first using a funnel to dump some down the pipe. You can get a gallon pail of this stuff for between $15 and $20 at most electrical supply stores (the places the electricians shop), though you might wind up with another brand. We found that a gallon was really excessive, we could have easily got by with a quart of the stuff (on a 100-meter pull). On the other hand, it was much easier to dip a paint brush into the gallon pail, then slop it onto the fiber cable and down the pipe. You really don’t want to be stingy with it, since friction in the pipe can damage the fiber jacket.

You need the fiber cable itself.  The type of multimedia fiber cable that we are talking about here comes on a ridiculously small spool (and to me, it always looks larger in photos than it really is, which for years led me to think that it wouldn’t fit through the existing pipe that was used in this situation) — this is what 100 meters of dual fiber looked like before the bubble wrap was removed:

Fiber cable with LC connectors

The fiber we used was described as “Advanced Interconnect 100 Meter LC-LC Duplex MultiMode Fiber Optic Cable. This Advanced Interconnect cable part number 038-001-964 REV A. Cable is 50/125 OFNP Micron Fiber.” It was obtained from eBay seller isellcables. If you are wondering what a dual LC connector looks like, there is a good photo here. Note that the connector comes with a protective cap, which should be left in place during the pulling process.

You need a couple of fiber media converters, one for each end, and if they use SFP modules you’ll need a couple of those as well.  They look like this:

Fiber media converter

Fiber media converter

Notice (if you can actually see it in these photos) that the fiber cable is plugged into the SFP module, which in turn is plugged into the media converter — here’s an enlarged closeup, where you can just see the end of the SFP (the small chrome part) sticking out of the media converter:

Fiber connects to SFP module, inserted into media converter

This media converter was described on eBay as “Gigabit Fiber media converter multimode MM, 1000Base SX” and “The FIB1-1000ES MM is a Gigabit Ethernet copper to multimode 850nm LC connector fiber media converter. It has an SFP (Small Form Pluggable) slot occupied by an MM 850nm multimode module, Ethernet 1000Base-SX compatible. The Copper interface is an auto negotiating 10/100/1000 BaseT RJ45 interface with auto MDI/MDI-X detection. …” I would point out that it’s important that it actually says 10/100/1000 BaseT if your network runs at anything less than 1000BaseT speeds, because not all media converters will handle multiple speeds or speed conversions. As Paul Timmins told me, “it’s VERY possible for something to ONLY support Gigabit. When you get down to media converter territory, the reason they get cheaper is they have less guts to convert stuff between 1000T and 100T (you need buffers, ability to send gigabit pause frames when your buffers are full, etc).”

As it happened, this eBay sale included a LC SFP with each converter, so those didn’t have to be purchased separately. The seller on these was sales_fo4all.

Below is an individual SFP in its packaging – you can’t see the model number but it’s SFM-7000-S85, which is described as a “1000Base-SX, multi-mode, 550m, 850nm SFP transceiver” and additionally, that “The capacity of SFM-7000-S85 module is 1.25Gbps (Gigabit rate). The transceiver extended range allows operation on either 50/125um or 62.5/125um multi-mode fiber for up to 550m distance. (Note: for 62.5/125um fiber, maximum operating distance is only 275m).” Since our cable was the 50/125 stuff, we could have gone a much greater distance (about 1800 feet) if necessary, and if we’d had a cable that long! In the picture below, the black part on the left is a small protective cap that is removed before you plug in the fiber cable.

SFP module

A better picture of a SFP module can be found here.  If you are observant, you may note that both the fiber converter and the SFP module shown above are made by the same company (CTC Union Technonlogies in this case).  You may wonder, as I did, if you can use one manufacturer’s SFP with a different manufacturer’s media converter or SFP-compatible switch.  According to Paul Timmins, “they’re theoretically universal but there’s absolutely nothing preventing them from vendor lockin (they’re active devices with internal serial numbers, etc, that help negotiate the capabilities of the optics with the device itself, and many vendors will refuse to work with another vendor’s GBIC/SFP).”  I’m also told that a certain big name networking equipment manufacturer takes measures to prevent you from using competitor’s SFPs (which can often be overridden with undocumented commands). So if at all possible, when buying new equipment try to buy the media converter and SFP module as a matched set, or failing that, make sure that both the media converter and the SFP module come from the same manufacturer (unless there is some guarantee of compatibility, or the cost difference is great enough that you are willing to take the gamble that it will work). Then all you have to worry about is whether the SFP has the correct connectors to match your cable, and whether it’s the correct power level for the range you are using (again, don’t get anything that’s rated for use with cables of multiple kilometers in length, unless your cable really is that long!).

After you pull the fiber cable, connecting everything up is fairly straightforward. The SFP plugs into the media converter or switch, and the fiber cable plugs into the SFP. You then simply connect the media converters to your existing network at both ends using a Cat 5e or Cat 6 patch cable. Then apply the power to the media converters at both ends (if you don’t apply the power until everything is plugged in, you can’t accidentally look into the laser!).

If you happen to get the type of media converters shown above, you may notice that there are dip switches on the unit.  There are for manually setting the port speed, and full or half duplex mode.  We left these in the factory default position (all up, which is indicated as “UDP/NWAY” mode) and it works fine. Another thing you might wonder is whether you can connect a computer directly to the media converter at the distant end of the connection, and of course the answer is yes, though many people will prefer to connect a switch so that multiple devices can be used. And remember, you do have the option to buy a switch that accepts one or more SFP modules directly, which may mean you won’t need the standalone media converter at that end — but before you do, check the power requirements.  As mentioned above, I found that such switches tended to be a bit power-hungry compared to the standalone media converters shown above.

What about the cost?

The upfront cost of running fiber is more expensive than using Cat 5e or Cat 6 underground, although if you add in the cost of good lightning protection at both ends (or replacing equipment that gets fried by lightning if you don’t use great lightning protection) then the cost difference is less significant. Today you can get 100 meters of fiber optic cable on eBay for about $80, including USPS Priority Mail shipping. The media converters and SFPs are still the expensive items — as I write this, they are going for $127 per set (media converter and SFP) on eBay, plus shipping. Add in the price of incidentals (pipe or conduit, pulling lubricant, network pull string) and you can expect to pay around $400 or perhaps a bit more for a 100-meter run (less if you can re-use existing pipe or conduit, more if you have to pay someone to dig a trench or otherwise run the cable through a difficult place). Of course you would have these same costs when running Cat 5e or Cat 6 underground, except for the media converters, so as a rough rule of thumb the price difference is the added price of the media converters and SFPs, minus the cost of the excellent lightning protection that you won’t need because fiber optic cable doesn’t conduct electricity.

I figure that in practice, the fiber install will cost an extra $150-$200 compared to an equivalent Cat 5e/Cat 6 install (again, we’re talking a 100-meter run here), but it will be worth it the next time you have an intense electrical storm nearby and realize that you’re probably not going to lose a lightning protector, computer, or router because of a surge coming in over the network cable.  It will also be worth it if the run is long enough that every hot and humid day results in a degraded connection when using Cat 5e or Cat 6 underground.

I do expect that the use of fiber will become more common in the future, since we will want ever-faster connections and there is a theoretical maximum on connection speed using copper.  At some point, I expect the prices of fiber equipment to fall (the day they start selling it in the big office supply chain stores is the day you will see the price drop to more reasonable levels). But for now, the prices aren’t that unreasonable (especially compared to a few years ago). By the way, if you want to be the next millionaire, design a system that allows people to reliably attach their own connectors to bulk fiber cable, and that sells for under $100. It’s ridiculous that anyone should have to pay four-figure sums just to be able to attach ends to fiber cable.

One other thing I think would help with fiber acceptance is to make an ultra-strong fiber cable that’s designed for difficult pulls – something with enough integral strength that you could pull the cable itself and not have to worry about breaking the glass fibers, and with a thick enough and tough enough jacket to withstand pulls over rough or uneven surfaces.  Basically, fiber cable that could take a lot of abuse without breaking (not that the stuff we used is all that fragile, but still, it would be nice to not have to worry that it can be easily damaged, especially when you’re paying eighty bucks for a 100-meter roll).

Thanks and acknowledgements

I want to thank Paul Timmins (the creator of the very useful TelcoData.us Telecommunications Database) for his help and patience in helping me understand all this stuff.  This article could not have been written without his assistance.  Also I want to thank my oldest son, who probably doesn’t want me to mention him by name, for his help and for letting me photograph some of the components in a recent installation.

My purpose in writing this article was to try and help de-mystify some aspects of using fiber optic cable in place of Cat 5e/6 for runs between nearby buildings. Again, I am NOT an expert in this, and I may have left some questions unanswered.  If you have questions or need clarification on some point, or if you see where I’ve made a glaring error, feel free to leave a comment. If I don’t respond, it probably means that I don’t know the answer, but maybe someone else with more expertise than I will chime in and help.

You know how you can go on YouTube and find old video dating back to the 1950’s and even earlier, including classic commercials? Well, there is one I remember, probably from the early to mid 1970’s, that I’ve never seen anywhere – in fact, you would never know the company ever existed if you searched for it on the Internet. It was called “Fox Foto” (or possibly “Fox Photo”, but I seem to remember it the first way) and they were a competitor to Fotomat and other similar “photo developing kiosk” operations. While Fotomat is remembered (possibly in part because of the reference in the “tornado episode” of WKRP in Cincinnati), Fox Foto seems to be forgotten. Which is a shame, because they had a great commercial.

Basically it was an all-male chorus line with a female lead, all dressed up in top hat and tails and singing and tap-dancing their hearts out, while holding flash cameras and occasionally taking flash pictures.  And the jingle (which still pops into my head occasionally) went like this, to the best of my recollection:

(Female lead:)

My pictures they are taken and I’m looking for some prints,
But I haven’t got forever and I’m looking for some hints…

(Male chorus response:)

Fox Foto makes a promise that’s a written guarantee,
You get your prints tomorrow or they give them to you free!

(Entire Chorus):

Tomorrow… Tomorrow…
Your pictures tomorrow or they’re free!

(Spoken by female):

Fox Foto!

(Chorus):

Look for the fox
Look… for… the… fox!

Does ANYONE else remember this commercial?  Perhaps Fox Foto only operated in Michigan, I don’t know, but in any case I would have thought this commercial would have been preserved as an example of “most entertaining” from back in the day. It probably just predates the introduction of home VCR’s, which may mean there are no remaining copies, which would be a shame if true.  Anyway, it’s funny how certain commercials from one’s youth get stuck in your head and pop to the surface every now and then, even when the company’s been out of business for decades. And now, I can’t find any mention at all of them. Very strange!

I would like to propose a new online shortcut, an acronym that can be used at appropriate times: YHINW

It stands for “Your Help is NOT Wanted” and the “Y” is intended to refer to a specific person, not everyone on the channel on group or forum you’re using.  Just the one person that’s being kind of a jerk.

For example, you ask a question about some piece of software, and you get this: RTFM — which, as we all know, stands for “Read The Fine Manual” (okay, I know F doesn’t really stand for “Fine”, but I try not to drop the F-bomb unless somebody or something really ticks me off.)  Often, what they are really saying is, “I don’t know the answer offhand (or I’m just too lazy to type a couple of meaningful sentences that might help you along), but I think maybe it might be in the manual, if an actual manual even exists — maybe it’s just one of those awful MAN pages that tells you everything you DON’T want to know, but only maybe touches on what you do want to know, if you can decipher it.  In any case, I’m much too superior/busy/arrogant to give you any real help.”  YHINW.

See, if you’re going to tell someone to RTFM, the very least you can do is assume they might have already tried that, and maybe give them a bit more specific information.  For example, “Look at the MAN page, search for the phrase {whatever} and it’s right under that.”  That would be actually helpful, and doesn’t take that much more time – unless, of course, the person making the RTFM comment has never actually looked at the manual/man page himself, and has no idea where the information might be. Anyway, let he who has read every page of every manual for every piece of software, every hardware device, every household appliance and every vehicle he’s ever owned — and understood every single word of those documents — be the first to cast a RTFM.

A similar situation is where you ask how to do something, and some jackass replies, “F***ing Google It.”  YHINW.  Telling someone to use Google to find something is actually a perfectly valid response, but maybe you should assume they don’t have your searching skills, so offer something like “Try Google using these search terms (or phrases)” and make a couple suggestions. It’s pretty daunting when you try to Google to discover how to do something, and you get 5,000,000 possible results, and none of the ones in the first five or ten pages of results give you anything remotely close to the answer. If you can’t even suggest some good search words or phrases, then maybe it’s you that lacks intelligence and imagination, not the person who posted the question.

Then there is the breed of jerk that haunts forums related to non-Windows machines or software.  You ask how to do something that is easily doable in Windows, and they give you a lecture about how you’re not using Windows anymore and you shouldn’t be trying to do that anyway.  Or they propose some “solution” that isn’t even close to what you asked about, and suggest that’s how you ought to be doing things, and if you don’t immediately take their advice with sufficient gratitude they flame you into oblivion as not being worthy to use that particular software, operating system, or computer — and if they’re in a particularly lousy mood, they may cast aspersions on your general character and intelligence.  Oh, puh-leeze — YHINW.  If you really don’t know of any way to do what I’m asking, than why not just STFU (if you don’t know that acronym, it’s sort of the written equivalent of “shut your pie hole”) instead of taking the opportunity to prove you’re an arrogant bastard that acts as though he was born with a computer keyboard in hand, and infinite knowledge in his brain (leaving no room for manners or basic social skills).

Even good advice, given with too much attitude and arrogance, will not usually be appreciated.  You might even be right, but come off like a jackass and the recipient of your advice will not thank you (that’s particularly true when it’s unsolicited advice — keep that in mind at your next family gathering).

I really don’t tolerate these types of people well.  My theory is, if you can’t offer something helpful and constructive — or if you can’t offer it without exhibiting a serious attitude — then just keep your fingers off the damn keyboard.  Let someone else answer, or let everyone ignore the original poster if no one knows the answer or wants to help.  There is no shame in keeping silent, rather than coming off as an arrogant jerk.  There have been times you’ve needed help — would you have appreciated a smart-ass comment instead of real help?  And if that actually happened to you, I’m sorry — the world can be a cruel place sometimes — but why not try making it a better place instead of passing on the misery to someone else?  Remember, karma is a bitch!

I’m passing along the following information, received from someone who wishes to remain anonymous (and I will respect that). So if you like, treat this as unverified information, wild-ass guess or what you will, but I suspect it’s pretty accurate – I guess we’ll know for sure at some point this afternoon (note that when he says “tomorrow”, that’s probably “today” for most readers, unless you’re in a western time zone and you catch this post when it first appears):

Tomorrow there will be a speech on building modular GUIs for FreeSWITCH. This is really an announcement of the new FreePBX v3. It will be demoed at Cluecon tomorrow, Wednesday, at 3pm. FreePBX 3 is a collection of ideas from the TCAPI and Phonebooth project merged with the lessons of the FreePBX and AMP projects. The community is still being run and coached by Philippe Lindheimer, but the lead on the TCAPI project (and some of its code) has been ported to a brand new framework – now known as FreePBX 3. More information is at http://www.freepbx.org/v3/

You should be aware that FreePBX 2 is NOT going away or suffering from a lack of development – infact, Philippe is likely releasing the next revision of FreePBX 2 shortly.

The software aims to be fully modular while remaining open source. When we say modular, this involves both modular switching and modular functionality. You don’t have to use the system as a PBX, although initially that is what most modules will revolve around.

So there you have it. Very interesting, no?

Google Voice is a great service, no doubt about it.  And for non-technical users that still have a basic PSTN phone line, or a regular mobile phone, it gives them a lot of flexibility. But for those of us who are a bit more technically inclined, it’s kind of frustrating.  Why? Because Google is a technology company, and yet they seem to want to “dumb down” Google Voice to the lowest common denominator.

Forget for a moment the hassle involved in making an outgoing call – sure, if you are sitting there with your old, black, rotary-dial phone and are about to make a 20 minute call to Grandma and your traditional phone company still charges for long distance like it’s 1985, then there would definitely be some appeal to going to the Google Voice site and entering the number you want to call, then having it call you and her and then bridging the call.  But most people just want to dial the call and have the doggone thing go through.  The Nerd Vittles folks have tackled that issue, but it’s not exactly an elegant solution, particularly if you’re not currently running an Asterisk-based PBX and using FreePBX (I don’t mean to denigrate the Nerd Vittles folks in any way by that comment; they’ve done a remarkable thing considering what they have to work with — it just really shouldn’t need to be that complicated, but that not the fault of the NV folks!). But my desire is even simpler – in the spirit of the old Grand Central service, which Google purchased to use as the basis of Google Voice, I just want to be able to receive incoming calls and direct them to where I want them to go.

And, sometimes, that means I want to direct them to a SIP address.  While that could even mean going direct to a VoIP adapter, in most cases it means that I will want to send the call to a SIP server (such as an Asterisk box).  The main thing is, I don’t want the call to touch the PSTN.  I don’t want it possibly converted to analog and back to digital.  And I certainly don’t want to see Google having to pay some PSTN company a termination charge to complete the call, when that’s absolutely unnecessary (and might even hasten the demise of a great free service).

But, you may say, Google gives us a way to do this – it lets you send the call to a Gizmo5 account…

And while it’s true that Gizmo is one of the destination choices, the problem here is that Gizmo5 has this nasty habit of changing their terms of service (EDIT: Michael Robertson, the CEO of Gizmo5, says that statement is inaccurate — see his comment, below). So far this has primarily affected outgoing calls — as was noted in the Nerd Vittles article linked above:

… What started out last Monday as a free, unlimited Google Voice service quickly morphed into a 20 minute call, and then a 3 minute call, and then 2¢ per minute for Google Voice calls. No notice to the early adopters, of course. So they’d only learn about all of this when the funds in their Gizmo5 accounts were exhausted. …

Hey, Google, can you understand that we MIGHT not want to utilize the services of a company that plays those sorts of games? But the question I’d like answered is this: What mechanism are they using to send those calls to Gizmo? And why couldn’t we have some other options – like, say, sending it to our own SIP devices or servers?  Why not let us specify a server name (and optionally a port), and then send the call the call to our Google Voice number at that address (for example, if the Google Voice number were 888-555-2368 it would send the call to sip://8885552368@yourserver.dyndns.com, or whatever address you use, on port 5060 unless you optionally specify a different port).

Another suggestion might be to add e164.org as an option. This would tell Google Voice to send the call as an ENUM call to the number specified.  It would not require any changes in their GUI (you’d still enter a regular phone number) but it would simply indicate that Google Voice should first try sending the call via ENUM before dumping it out to the PSTN. You can register up to four phone numbers with e164.org for free and once you add the required information, anyone can call you using ENUM and the call will go completely over the Internet.  Notably, e164.org does not actually handle the call, it’s simply a directory service (think a DNS lookup for SIP calls).  There’s also a newer, similar service at enumplus.org, and they actually offer a module for use with PBX in a Flash and other FreePBX-based distributions. Google Voice should allow the use of use one or both of these services to complete calls — in fact, maybe Google should consider buying one of these services, so they can operate their own ENUM registry (if Google did it, I’m sure the acceptance factor for using ENUM to route calls for free over the Internet would increase exponentially).

All I’m asking is, please, Google, give us a way to receive our Google Voice calls without letting them touch the PSTN — you’re an Internet company, for crying out loud! — and without forcing us to have a Gizmo5 account, since the moods of that company seem to change with the weather, and we don’t need them as an intermediary on our calls anyway!

EDIT: If you would like to make this request of Google Voice, you could go to their “Suggest a feature for Google Voice” page, go to the “I have another idea” section at the bottom of the page, select “Other” from the dropdown, and enter your suggestion into the text box and then click “Suggest It.” I don’t know if anyone actually reads or considers those suggestions, but maybe if enough of us requested the direct-to-SIP option, they might just make it so!

I just has the distinct displeasure of trying, unsuccessfully, to help a friend obtain AT&T DSL service at his home. Right now he has phone service from a competitive phone company, but what he wants to do is get the least expensive DSL service that AT&T offers (the variety they have been advertising on TV, that does not require the customer to have their dial tone), then use VoIP for his phone service — but he doesn’t want to disconnect his current voice service until everything else is up and working.  Apparently, he might as well be wanting a flying car or a time machine.  Even putting aside the issue of the competitive phone service, the first thing that needs to be done is to get the DSL installed, and if ever a company acts like they don’t want your business, it’s AT&T.

On his first attempt, he picked an AT&T number out of the phone book and called that.  That attempt apparently came to a screeching halt when AT&T told him they could not install DSL as long as he had phone service from the competitive phone company.  Actually, there’s no TECHNICAL reason that you can’t provide DSL from one company and voice from another on the same pair, but for whatever reason it’s apparently just not done.  I wasn’t listening in on that call so I don’t know all the details, but after that we did a three-way call to see if we’d have any better luck (and honestly, I wanted to hear if it was as bad as he’d described it).

The first thing we did was to call the number that is advertised on the AT&T commercials for $19.95 DSL.  That, apparently, is your ticket into the seven circles of telephone hell.  If I’d been playing a drinking game, taking a drink every time we heard the phrase “your call is important to us”, I would not be drunk – I’d likely be quite dead.  We heard it from female voices, male voices, and disembodied voices that sounded like they were continents away.  I’d guess we were transferred at least half a dozen times, sometimes by voice response systems that didn’t even wait for a response and just seemed to randomly transfer the call.  The last time we were transferred, it was by some guy with a distinct accent — it sort of sounded Indian, but by that time the quality of the connection was so poor it was hard to tell — who told us that if we got cut off, we could call the AT&T DSL department directly on 877-722-9337 (my friend repeated the number back TWICE to make sure he’d heard it right, and I copied it down also).  That number may have belonged to AT&T at one time, but now it apparently belongs to an “enhanced” directory service (that has a web site at http://www.callingten.com/).  When their recording first answers, it almost sounds like you are being charged $4.95 (or some amount, it was hard to hear) for the call (I think you actually have to call a different number for that to happen, but it wasn’t really all that clear).

Anyway, when we got cut off after talking to the guy with the accent, and then getting the recording at the directory service, I finally went prowling around AT&T’s web site and found another number for Internet service – 1-800-288-2020 – and again we had to go through a voice response system and several minutes of wait.  Finally we reached someone who actually tried to be helpful, but it took her several minutes to find my friend’s address in their system (he lives in an apartment complex, but still, they do offer service there, so it shouldn’t have been a major undertaking to find the address).  Then she asked a bunch of questions about his phone, Internet, and television usage (I would have probably politely declined to answer, but he went along), and from that she deduced that he should order a triple play package that, if I recall correctly, would have cost over $70 a month.  When he said he was just interested in the basic low-speed DSL, she then (after some more time passed) said that they could not put the DSL on the same pair as the existing phone service (well, she didn’t exactly say it that way, but that’s what we figured out that she meant, after some conversation). At least she didn’t say he couldn’t get it at all.

But the real deal killer was that apparently she wasn’t at all aware of a promotion my friend had seen online.  According to him, the deal was that if you made a one-year service commitment, you got a free DSL modem and $100 back (I’m a bit skeptical about the $100 for that class of service, but I could see the free DSL modem as a possibility, given that AT&T probably buys them in bulk).  However, this representative basically said he’d have to commit to service for a year or pay an early termination penalty if he dropped the service before the year was up, and she couldn’t give him anything free or in any way sweeten the offer — he’d still have to pay about $50 for a DSL modem, plus a shipping charge!  It sounded as though she had no idea what deals might be offered on the web site. My friend wasn’t willing to set himself up for a possible termination charge, if for some reason he had to discontinue service (and I’m betting he wouldn’t — he’s the kind of guy that doesn’t like change much, so once they had him as a customer they’d likely have him for years — but in an apartment situation you just never know.  If there is a fire or a pipe breaks or something, he could be forced to move out with very little notice). After having been on the phone for over three hours, and being told that “your call is important to us” when clearly it was NOT, his sense of humor had long since evaporated and to basically be told, “this is the deal, take it or leave it” was just a bit too much to take under the circumstances.

I don’t know if my friend will ever get DSL service now or not.  He was somewhat enthused about it before this morning, but that certainly wasn’t his attitude by the time he was going into the fourth hour of phone hell. I am SO glad I don’t personally live in an area where AT&T and Comcast are the only viable choices available (my friend lives in Gaines Township which is near Wyoming, Michigan, in the Grand Rapids metro area, but not close enough to downtown to be within range of any inexpensive wireless services, as far as we know).

Why does AT&T bother to advertise the service if they don’t want people to get it?  Is it just bait-and-switch – you can call in for the $19.95 offer but if they can’t upsell you to something more expensive then they don’t care if you take their service or not? I might be inclined to actually believe that, but then I realize that most of the “phone hell” occurred before they had even determined why my friend was calling.

I have three takeaways from this:  First, if Comcast would just offer an entry-level DSL service for people who are, shall we say, not wealthy, they could clean AT&T’s clock.  I know a lot of people don’t like Comcast and there is probably good reason for that, but I have a feeling that if my friend had been willing to pay their rate, he wouldn’t have been on the phone with them for more than ten or fifteen minutes tops.  He certainly would not have been transferred all over creation because a particular rep didn’t handle Michigan, or DSL, or whatever the excuse was. Now, I have no way to know what his actual installation experience might have been, but at least trying to sign up for the service probably wouldn’t have seemed something akin to a root canal. Comcast really shoots themselves in the foot by doing that “introductory rate” nonsense — by now everyone is on to that (ironically, in part due to AT&T commercials) so what they really need is a low rate option with limited connection speed, for people who don’t do much more than check e-mail and go to a few web pages.

Second, after all this time, AT&T still acts like they are the only game in town, and that they really don’t need to give a damn whether ordering a service is a pleasant, or at least non-painful experience. In my opinion, any time a customer hears a recording saying “your call is important to us”, that’s a massive fail on the part of a company.  If you really thought the call was important, you’d answer it, and to tell us the call is important to you when it clearly isn’t is a massive insult.  And you wouldn’t put numbers in your television ads that go to people who have no ability to help the customer with ordering service, and who must transfer them several times before finally losing the call completely (actually terminating with a bust of hold music played at about four times normal volume, just before the call dropped entirely).  And speaking of which, I thought AT&T was originally a phone company – so why is their own phone service so dreadful?

Third, the phone companies still do everything they can to inhibit competition.  As I said earlier, there’s no TECHNICAL reason you can’t have voice service from one company and DSL from another on the same pair (and the plan was to drop the existing voice service anyway, but only after the DSL was working).  But apparently AT&T can’t make that happen, for whatever reason. My friend doesn’t know how many usable pairs are run into each apartment (in particular, whether there’s more than one) and due to family circumstances it would be pretty difficult for me to go over there and trace out the wiring for him right now – it’s just a bit too far away, and I can’t be away that long right now.

I know from reading sites like The Consumerist that dealing with companies like AT&T is getting to be a really horrible experience, but until I listened in on my friend’s attempts to get DSL service this afternoon, I had no idea it was that bad.  Now I understand why the iPhone users are so upset that Apple forged an exclusive deal with AT&T in the U.S. – based on what I heard this afternoon, the “AT&T experience” is almost the exact opposite of what Apple users have come to expect from Apple.  Does AT&T have a death wish, or are they really just that incompetent?

There is an alternative to Asterisk called FreeSWITCH that’s been of some interest, because in some ways it’s arguably better than Asterisk.  However, it’s not been nearly as widely adopted as Asterisk.  That’s in part because Asterisk has the name recognition factor, but also because, unlike Asterisk, there have not to this point been any good GUI-based interfaces for FreeSWITCH.  Much of the adoption of Asterisk has been in part due to projects like FreePBX, which spares administrators the chore of writing their own dial plans.

Now, a tantalizing hint has been dropped that FreePBX may offer some form of support for FreeSWITCH.  In a message thread at FreePBX.org, lead developer Philippe Lindheimer has posted this message: “There will be an official announcement within the next 2 weeks. Consider that period coincides with Cluecon which is in 2 weeks “

Makes you wonder…

I was about 17 years old and radio station CKLW (a radio station in Windsor, Ontario that was then the top-rated station in many nearby U.S. cities such as Detroit, Toledo, and even Cleveland) was running a contest — seems like they were always running a contest — called “secret satellite.”  The idea was, they gave clues (progressively easier) about where a “secret satellite” had supposedly crashed.  If you guessed right and were the correct caller, you won a brand-new Plymouth Satellite automobile. They gave out two numbers to call (neither was toll-free) — one was in Windsor and the other in Detroit. Since there was a pretty good chance you would not be the “correct” caller even if you got through, and since the rate at the time for an “international” call to Windsor was significantly higher that the rate to the Detroit number (which was itself high enough because it was an in-state call), the obvious choice was to call the Detroit number.  Well, I figured out the answer and tried to call — and got blocked by a telephone company recording.

Without going into all the details, that was where I first learned about geographic telephone numbers, and it’s also where I learned the power of contacting the Public Service Commission with a complaint.  I was mad because I knew somebody was lying to me — Michigan Bell was claiming that CKLW had requested they block calls from outside the 313 area code, and CKLW replied (by letter) that they had done no such thing. In the end, you get one guess who was lying (hint: the lies weren’t coming out of Canada). Had I been older and had my dad not been doing some contract work for Michigan Bell at the time, chances are I would have pursued the matter further, but at least I got them to unblock the number — long after someone else had won the car, after giving the exact same answer I would have given.

So I have some sympathy for the woman described in this Consumerist article, who claims to have lost $1,000 because Vonage routes all calls to 1-800 numbers through New York and the station could not, or would not accept the calls. The problem is that the woman (and apparently The Consumerist, judging by the headline on the article) appear to be blaming Vonage for the screwup. Now, Vonage isn’t my favorite company either, but let’s be realistic here.

When you have VoIP service — or cell phone service for that matter — and you place a call that goes to a PSTN number, the calls have to get connected to the PSTN network somewhere, and that somewhere probably isn’t going to be in your home town. In the case of a toll-free call, it gets dumped onto the PSTN, but after that several things can happen.  You need to understand that, without getting too technical, the telephone number of the phone originating the call can be transmitted in either or both of two ways — as the Caller ID number, and as Automatic Number Identification data (ANI, usually pronounced “Annie”). The least expensive ways for a VoIP company to send a call to the PSTN — particularly a toll-free call — often does not transmit ANI that corresponds in any way to the original caller’s number. Again, without getting too technical, this is because the original caller doesn’t own the circuit that makes the connection to the PSTN, and chances are the VoIP company doesn’t own it either (at least in the case of smaller VoIP companies).

So to cut to the chase, a VoIP company has few choices – in most cases they use a good but inexpensive method of sending toll-free calls to the PSTN, which may or may not send the correct Caller-ID number of the original caller, but in probably the vast majority of cases does not send ANI data that corresponds to that caller.  And in fact, most VoIP companies probably could not send out toll-free calls with a “local” ANI without increasing their costs dramatically, and for probably 99%+ of toll-free calls it’s not necessary, because most companies these days know better than to “cheap out” by putting geographic restrictions on their toll-free numbers.

The real issue here is that, without commenting on this specific case (of which I know nothing other than what I read in the Consumerist article), radio stations are notorious for pinching pennies — I know because I’ve worked at a couple when I was much younger, and the lengths that station owners and managers will go to in order to save a few cents are legendary in the industry. When you have a toll-free number, one of the things you can do (particularly if you’ve obtained the number from a traditional telephone company) is request that you only receive calls that appear to originate in certain area codes.  And why would you do that?  For one reason and one reason only — you don’t want to pay for wrong number calls and prank calls that come from outside your service area. Of course, with the advent of “soft” PBX’s, the end-user can now do similar filtering, based on either ANI (if they receive that on their incoming trunk) or Caller ID.

That MIGHT have been a good idea back in the 1980’s and before, when toll-free calls cost the subscriber a lot more than a couple of cents per minute. It’s certainly NOT a good idea now.  Why?  Because people are starting to keep their phone numbers even when they move. I could be sitting in the lobby of your radio station in Washington, D.C., and whip out a cell phone and try to call you, and you might think I’m in California if I originally obtained service for my phone in California, or if my provider is connecting call to the PSTN via a gateway that’s not sending ANI associated with my cell phone.  The same is true of VoIP — even if I’m sitting at home a block away from you and using my VoIP line to call you, if you are basing the decision on whether to accept my call based on ANI there’s an extremely good chance that the ANI isn’t going to be in any way associated with my actual location.  Even if you use Caller ID data, I could still be a block away from you but have a number in an area code 3,000 miles away, so that’s not going to work either.

The real message here is that radio stations either need to stop refusing toll-free calls based on ANI or Caller-ID data, or if they are just too cheap to do that (and believe me, based on my previous experiences with broadcasters, many are) then stop using toll-free numbers altogether.  Or, give out a toll-free number AND a local (non-toll-free) number, specifying that cell and VoIP callers should use the local number. Or, just keep cheaping out, and risk alienating more and more of their listeners.  If listeners cannot get into their contest lines, what’s the point of listening to a commercial radio stations, with all their ads and (sometimes) annoying announcers?  There are always online services like Pandora and Last.fm, or personal music players that play the selection of music that you like, not the stuff the radio station is force-feeding this week. Personally, even the possibility of winning a thousand bucks would not be enough to induce me to listen to today’s banal and annoying commercial radio (I know, I’m an olde phart now, but from what I’ve been reading, the kids aren’t listening to radio much either).

By the way, I’m not a lawyer, but if the woman in question decides to sue anyone in small claims court, perhaps the best course of action would be to jointly sue Vonage, the radio station, and the local telephone company that supplies the toll-free service to the radio station (if she can find out which company that might be), and let the court figure out which is actually liable.  I don’t know if it would be worth the effort for a thousand bucks, but I think it would be interesting to many of us to see which party a court would actually hold liable in such a situation.

Meanwhile, if you run a VoIP company, you might consider including some language in your Terms of Service that says something like this (again, I AM NOT A LAWYER, and this is NOT legal advice – before you do anything like this be sure to run it by YOUR lawyer): “(Company name) does not warrant that calls sent to the public switched telephone network will always contain correct Caller ID and/or Automatic Number Indentification (ANI) data.  If a customer places a call to a toll-free number, and the owner of the number rejects calls based on Caller ID or ANI data, they may sometimes reject calls from our customers, for reasons that are beyond our control.  In such cases, it is the customer’s responsibility to contact the owner of the toll-free number and request that they discontinue blocking of calls based on Caller ID or ANI data, or to obtain and call a non-toll-free number instead.  Nothing in this paragraph applies to the routing of emergency calls to 911 services.” Again, this is written by someone with maybe a small bit of technical background but NO LEGAL BACKGROUND, so IT’S NOT LEGAL ADVICE, so DON’T USE IT WITHOUT CHECKING WITH YOUR LAWYER FIRST.  Got it?!?

Maybe it’s high time for the FCC to step in and ban geographic or area code restrictions on toll-free calls (at least at the carrier level) for precisely the reasons I’ve mentioned — telephone numbers are more and more becoming non-geographic. The possibility of having “one phone number for life”, no matter where you move, is no longer a farfetched notion – a child coming of age today could indeed arrange to have one phone number for life, barring technical changes that revise the way phone numbers are issued, or a company that goes out of business along the way or some such thing. Businesses need to realize that, and get rid of this antiquated and silly notion of blocking calls based on area codes and/or exchange prefixes, which nowadays often give no indication whatsoever of the geographic location of the caller.

1-800-FREE411, a well-known provider of free directory assistance calls in the United States, is now branching out and allowing people to complete calls for free, even to international destinations. Here’s an excerpt from their press release:

BILLERICA, MA–(Marketwire – July 15, 2009) – The nation’s first and leading provider of free directory assistance, 1-800-FREE411, has launched a new feature that connects callers to most phone numbers worldwide for a FREE long distance call. Callers from the continental United States can place a five minute call through 1-800-FREE411 to reach out and connect with loved ones no matter how far away they may be.

To place a free long distance call, callers dial 1-800-FREE411 and listen to the main menu prompts where they can select “free call.” After entering the phone number that they wish to call, including a country code, they will be connected free of charge for five minutes. Callers have to listen to two short advertisements and there is no limit on the number of calls they can make in a day. Mobile phone callers may still be charged for minutes by their service provider. …..

Read the rest of the press release here.

This seems like a very useful service, particularly since it’s reachable from an 800 number.  I don’t know if the number is blocked from pay phones (does anyone still use those?), but if not, it could conceivably be used even to make free local calls. (EDIT: According to a comment left by Casey, the number is blocked from pay phones. Too bad, but not unexpected given the outrageous rates charged for completion of toll-free calls from pay phones).

If you live outside the United States, there are several ways to make free calls to U.S.-based 800 numbers using various VoIP services – I won’t elaborate on that here, but a bit of time spent using a search engine should yield a method that will work for you.

I only wish someone would set up a sip-based service like this, so that from your sip phone you could call something like destination_number@someaddress.com and the call would go through, because we could then route international calls from home-based PBX’s to such a service, and while we’d still hear the ads (presumably), at least we wouldn’t have the two-step dialing process.

I just hope this one lasts a while, since previous services of this type have had a tendency to disappear after a month or two. But, 1-800-FREE411 has been around for quite some time now already, so I’d be more inclined to assume that they have their business model figured out.

BILLERICA, MA–(Marketwire – July 15, 2009) – The nation’s first and leading provider of free directory assistance, 1-800-FREE411, has launched a new feature that connects callers to most phone numbers worldwide for a FREE long distance call. Callers from the continental United States can place a five minute call through 1-800-FREE411 to reach out and connect with loved ones no matter how far away they may be.

To place a free long distance call, callers dial 1-800-FREE411 and listen to the main menu prompts where they can select “free call.” After entering the phone number that they wish to call, including a country code, they will be connected free of charge for five minutes. Callers have to listen to two short advertisements and there is no limit on the number of calls they can make in a day. Mobile phone callers may still be charged for minutes by their service provider.

]]> http://michigantelephone.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/marketwire-1-800-free411-now-offering-free-long-distance-calls-within-u-s-and-to-most-international-destinations/feed/ 1 michigantelephone http://michigantelephone.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/the-consumerist-beware-buying-advice-from-bloggers-on-the-take-commentary/ http://michigantelephone.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/the-consumerist-beware-buying-advice-from-bloggers-on-the-take-commentary/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:14:41 +0000 michigantelephone http://michigantelephone.wordpress.com/?p=1022 ]]>

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

I will tell you this much up front. I have accepted freebies in the past, in two categories. One is books — publishers frequently send out review copies of books, and I’m not above reviewing one, once in a while. I did this 25 years ago when I was writing for a computer club newsletter and I’ll still very occasionally do it today. The difference today is I’m a lot more selective – usually I won’t even accept a book unless I think there’s at least some chance it will be interesting or useful to me. Just within the last week, I declined the opportunity to review a book because, frankly, I have a bias against both the company behind the product that is the subject of the book, and against the author of the book, due to (ironically enough) what I considered unethical practices by both.

To my way of thinking, once a book goes out to a reviewer it cannot be resold as new anyway, so why would the publisher want it back? At that point it has minimal value — sure, I suppose that I could resell it as a used book if I were so inclined, but I don’t ever do that. But more to the point, the fact that it’s a free book isn’t sufficient to cause me to write enthusiastic praise about it, particularly if the book is a real dog.

The other category is hardware. In the two cases where I have reviewed a hardware product since starting this blog, I have contacted the distributor of that product because it was something that I was interested in and because I thought the product was something more people should know about. I basically wanted to verify that the product worked as advertised. In one case the product was so interesting to me that what I had intended to be a one-post review turned into a seven-part series, and yet I still reported as honestly as I could on the subject (does anyone who read that series not get that I thought the documentation that came with the unit was deficient?). I didn’t say good things about the unit because I got to keep it after the review; instead I said good things about it because it works well and could solve a problem that many users have (getting VoIP to work through a difficult firewall setup).

The actual reason that I had become interested in that particular product was because I had recently tried (and failed) to help someone get a SIP connection working using a Linksys PAP2 on a connection that had to go through two routers. The double NAT setup just killed the audio in both directions, and the guy I was trying to help wasn’t inclined to spend a lot of time troubleshooting. I got to thinking how nice it would be to have a VoIP adapter available that uses the IAX protocol, which usually works quite well in that sort of situation. The Atcom AG-188N seemed like a good choice, but I didn’t have an immediate need for one, so I thought I’d try requesting a review sample. And when I received it, it was one of those happy situations where the unit actually delivered a lot more than I had expected (even if the documentation left something to be desired).

But would I ever write a bad review of a hardware product I had received for free? Oh, yes, I certainly would. Back in the early days of the TRS-80 computer, I had an early dot matrix printer (to this day I’m embarrassed to say what I paid for that thing – suffice it to say I could probably buy about ten laser printers today for what that underpowered dot-matrix printer cost back then). Anyway, a company that was advertising in one of the computer magazines was selling a device that, when inserted between the computer and the printer, was supposed to provide enhanced page-formatting capability (remember, back then most dot-matrix printers were LINE printers and had no text formatting capabilities whatsoever). I requested a review unit, and had it worked even reasonably well I would have reported that honestly. But frankly, the product sucked. Not only did it not work as advertised, it actually interfered with normal printing!

I reported that as accurately as I could, and advised people to avoid the unit. The manufacturer was very upset with me, to put it mildly, and wrote me a nasty letter demanding I return their product, which I was more than happy to do (who needs a piece of useless electronic junk lying around?), even though I was under no legal obligation to do so (I then wrote a followup article, noting the manufacturer’s petulance). Apparently they thought that by giving me a free unit, I could be bought – and they were wrong. Free or not, it still has to work as advertised.

There are two things I will not do. One is that I will not let someone else write a review for me and publish it in my blog. If and when I use someone else’s words, I clearly identify them (for example, I might include a list of product specifications from the manufacturer’s web site, but I will tell you the source, and usually include a link). The other is that I would never accept any payment to write a review. I guess I don’t consider being allowed to keep an under-$100 product as payment (now, if I were reviewing expensive wide-screen TV’s, that might be a different matter). Again, my reasoning is that once I’ve had the product in my possession, it can no longer be sold as new, and frankly I don’t want the bother and expense of having to ship it back, and I usually wouldn’t have requested it in the first place if I didn’t think it might be useful to me at some point. But think about it – if the only “compensation” I am getting is being allowed to keep the product, and the product is a piece of crap, what possible inducement would I have to say anything good about it?

I know that a few of the major print magazines make it a point to ship review products back to the manufacturer when they are finished with them, but they usually have a lot larger budgets than most bloggers (not to mention an in-house shipping department). But keep in mind that not all reviews you see in a magazine are necessarily the result of in-house testing. Some of them may be “work for hire”, which is to say, articles purchased from independent writers not directly affiliated with the magazine. In those cases, you (and perhaps the magazine publisher) have no way of knowing if the reviewer got to keep the product — or got any other form of compensation (beyond what the magazine paid) for writing the article.

Because the FTC and others are suddenly become concerned about this, I’m probably going to have to add a line to any future reviews, that says something like “Disclosure: The publisher let me keep the book after I was finished reviewing it”, or, “Disclosure: The distributor or manufacturer provided this product for review purposes and is not requiring me to return it” whenever that is the case. I’d suggest that other bloggers who accept books or products for review may want to do the same.

But what you really need to beware of are those bloggers that will publish “ghost written” reviews, or that actually accept money (or other compensation) to write positive reviews. The thing you are trying to detect is the “quid pro quo”, where there is an actual or implied understanding that the blogger will only write a positive review. One possible tipoff is when a review says only good things (nothing is perfect, after all), but on the other hand, keep in mind that it is possible that the reviewer was simply very impressed with the book or product (it does happen — sometimes a product really surprises you). Perhaps a larger clue is if the blog in question seems to deal almost exclusively in reviews and other “PR” type material — or has only one or two posts since creation, and they both just happen to be reviews! Of course, I would hope that (whenever possible) people would seek out multiple reviews before buying a product, and not just depend on a single blog posting.

Anyway, if anyone has a VoIP-related product they want reviewed, my conditions would generally be these: First, I don’t write reviews for hire, so expect an honest evaluation. Second, if the product costs under $100 (retail) and you decide you want it back after the review, I’m probably going to think you’re a little bit chintzy, but you’d best mention that fact up front. Third, in any case, if you want it back you’ll need to provide a prepaid UPS return shipping label (and be aware that I don’t live all that close to a UPS dropoff point, so it might be a little while before you get it back). Fourth, in the future I’ll probably have to add a disclosure line to my reviews, as mentioned above. And fifth, and most important, I don’t have the time or inclination to review anything and everything, so unless it’s something I have a particular interest in (such as a VoIP-related product) don’t be surprised if I decline — I do not want this to turn into a “review blog.”

It’s another in my (very) irregular series of “why hasn’t anyone made this yet?” posts…

The idea on this one is simple. Since all the television stations in the United States are now broadcasting in digital format, and since you can buy DTV converter boxes for as little as about $50, I’m assuming that decoding a DTV channel’s data stream isn’t a real big deal.  So why not take that one step further and allow that signal to be remodulated onto a different channel?  The difference between a converter box and what I have in mind is simply this:  A converter box takes a digital signal and converts it to another channel, but the output is analog.  I’m saying do the same thing, except make the output a digital signal, on a different channel than the original.

And WHY would you want to do this?  Well, for any of several reasons:

• Your antenna is at a distance from your house (or from another building that you’re feeding a signal to), and a station you want to get is way up on UHF, and coaxial cable is typically quite lossy at UHF frequencies.  So, at the bottom of your tower, you convert that channel to VHF (say channel 2, which is now unused in most areas) and now you can send it even a few hundred feet down RG-6 (or RG-11) and still have a usable signal.
• You have two adjacent channels that you want to receive that are almost equally strong, but in different directions (say for example, channel 8 from the south and channel 9 from the north).  You want to put up a separate antenna to pick up the one station that’s in a different direction from the others, but you can’t just combine the signals using a reverse splitter because on some channels the two antennas might cancel each other out.  Nor can you use a JoinTenna because they are not recommended for use on adjacent channels. So you run the one antenna in a digital demodulator-remodulator and change only the one channel you want to a low VHF channel that’s unused in your area.
• Cable channel substitution – say your cable company gives you a channel your wouldn’t be caught dead watching (the gimme-your-money religious and shopping channels come to mind) but they don’t give you a channel you want to watch that you can receive with a rooftop antenna. A deluxe model of this unit could actually do drop-in channel substitution – say you receive the over the air channel on 9 but you want to replace a station on 24, you could do that.

Give me enough time and I could probably think up a few more uses – point is, this is a DTV problem solver.

In my opinion, an excellent unit of this type Would have two coax inputs and two coax outputs:

• An input that carries the channel you want to convert (often from a “secondary” antenna)
• An input that carries the signal that you want to insert the converted channel into (the cable line or “primary” antenna feed)
• An output that carries the combination of both the second input and the converted channel from the first input
• A “passthru” output for the first input, that passes it through unchanged

The reason for the last output would be so you can “stack” boxes, in case you have multiple signals coming off that “secondary” antenna.  You’d bring that antenna into the first box, have that one convert the weakest signal, and then pass the line to box 2, and have it convert another channel.  Your primary feed (cable or main antenna) would pass through both boxes, and each box would insert a channel.

Options: Each box should have a way to do basic setup. Options that would need to be set are as follows:

• Channel you want to convert (specified by channel number or frequency)
• New output channel (also specified by channel number or frequency)
• Option – primary and channel to be converted are on same input

The last option would be used in the case where you have only one line coming in but you still want to convert a channel, say from UHF to VHF.  In this case, the converted channel would still appear at its original postion, but would also be downconverted to the lower channel and inserted back into the feed.

An inexpensive unit might only allow a limited choice of output channels, say VHF only (or even low VHF only, but please not just 3 and 4!).  A deluxe unit might allow the type of channel replacement I mentioned above (actually removing a digital channel from the primary feed and replacing it with another channel).  A VERY deluxe unit might have a network connection that would present a web interface browsable on the TV or the local network, allowing selection of video files off the local network or perhaps from online sources, and could modulate those files onto a particular local digital channel, in addition to (or instead of) remodulating an off-the-air signal.  In addition, the deluxe unit might have the ability to convert more than one channel from the second antenna or source.

But the main point is, in no way should this be an analog conversion, and absolutely no RF should be allowed to cross paths – each input and output should be totally isolated from the other inputs and outputs, except of course for the “passthru” output, which should carry ONLY the unchanged signal from the secondary antenna. When a channel is changed in frequency, it should be done by extracting the data stream from the original signal, then regenerating that digital stream and remodulating it on the conversion channel.

Finally, I’ll even throw one other idea out there, if someone wants a real challenge – have a “replacement signal” mode.  How would that work?  Well, extending the previous example, let’s say your digital channel 8-1 and your digital channel 9-1 are both CBS affiliates.  And let’s say that neither is 100% reliable.  So what you might do is, in some way indicate to the box that both digital channel 9 from the secondary antenna and digital channel 8 from the primary antenna are to be converted to digital channel 3, but you want the channel 8 signal to take precedence.  The receiver would constantly demodulate both signals, but if for any reason the channel 8 data stream is interrupted, it would smoothly switch over to the channel 9 stream until the channel 8 signal comes back to an acceptable level.  This feature, of course, would probably only work well during times when both stations are showing the same network programing, and even then might be a little disconcerting, but not nearly as annoying as having a program disappear completely for thirty seconds or a minute. And, it would seldom or never work right for the secondary channels (e.g. 8-2 and 9-2 in this case).

(I might also add that it could look at the SAME channel on the two different inputs, in case you’re trying to use “diversity reception” techniques – in essence it would then pick whichever data steam was the most usable at any given moment, and try to “fill in the blanks” from the other, converting the best data stream to the remodulated channel frequency).

Now, I know that you can buy equipment designed for use at a cable company head end that can do this sort of thing, but what home viewer has two grand to drop on something like this?  That’s why I say, make a consumer grade unit and keep the price reasonable – the lowest end units should not cost more than about $75, certainly not more than $100 (and if you charge that much, please include a fantastic tuner!).

Whoever is the first to make something like this will be hailed by consumers and TV antenna installers alike!

Of course there’s also that OTHER device that a lot of people want, but that we may never see — a device that will take the HDMI video output and digital audio output from some source, and modulate it onto a channel for local distribution. No, even that would NOT replace what I’ve described above, though, because it would likely only be able to modulate one video source per channel, whereas the over the air data streams may actually contain three or four program streams (which makes my “replacement signal” idea a lot more difficult to do properly).  But my thought is that if you’re going through the trouble and expense of remodulating a channel, you at least want ALL the programming on that channel (the entire data stream, in other words).

Originally posted on Friday, July 3, 2009 at 4:00 AM EDT.

For those in the television backwaters — the places that have lost one or more network TV signals due to the switch to digital television — there are alternatives, in a little known form of satellite television.

It’s kind of like one of those “good news, bad news” jokes.

The good news is that there are dozens, even hundreds of television signals available absolutely free, and the reception is almost always crystal clear. As long as you have a clear view of the southern sky, and aren’t prohibited from setting up a satellite dish (if someone — landlord, homeowner’s association, zoning authority, anyone — tries to tell you that you are prohibited from having a dish, that prohibition may be illegal under federal law), all that television is yours for the viewing.

The bad news: There are many “catches”.

First of all, don’t expect to get the equivalent of cable or commercial satellite TV.  While there are a handful of cable channels that will occasionally become available for short periods of time, most of the stations are the sort you’d find on low-power local television stations, or on the secondary channels of local HDTV stations (those channel-02 and channel-03 channels, for example). Many are in Spanish, or some other foreign language.  If you are really lucky, you might pick up a major network feed, but if you do, you probably don’t want to tell anybody, because if too many people find out, that channel will almost certainly disappear.

And that’s the biggest rub with this service — unless you’re really good at scrounging used equipment and figuring out what needs to be done to make it usable with the free signals, you’ll spend at a minimum two to three hundred dollars to get a working system going, and even more if you want to receive signals from multiple satellites or if you want to receive true HDTV signals (note that almost all satellite television is digital these days, but not all of it is in high definition). And once you have spent all that money, the stations you enjoy today could be gone tomorrow.

There is an apocryphal story that went around in the satellite forums — a cable television company in Alaska fed several of the Anchorage TV stations to one of the satellites in the clear, presumably for the purpose of feeding this signals to remote cable systems in cities and villages around Alaska. Those “in the know” enjoyed these stations, particularly viewers in the Eastern half of the U.S., because they provided the west coast feeds of all the major networks. That much I know to be fact, everything else is just rumor that was floating around the satellite forums a while back.

One day, as the story goes, some bigmouth in a bar was bragging about how he could watch the Saturday baseball feeds from both coasts.  What he did not know was that the president of the cable company was there, and was unaware (to that point) that his technicians were uplinking the signals in a totally unencrypted format that anyone with the right kind of receiver and satellite dish could view, no subscription required.  He overheard the bigmouth, and ordered his technicians to scramble the signal, but that wasn’t the end of it.

As the story goes, FOX got wind of the incident and realized that by feeding games to the East and West coasts separately, some folks could watch TWO MLB games on Saturday, just by changing feeds.  I’m not sure if this violated some contractual agreement with Major League Baseball or what, but all anyone knows for sure is that in subsequent seasons, they started doing all Saturday baseball feeds starting at 4:00 PM Eastern nationwide – no more 1:00 PM games for the Eastern and Central time zones.

So the lesson is, you could spend considerable $$$ on receiving equipment, but that doesn’t guarantee there will be anything you want to watch. Here today, maybe gone tomorrow, and loose lips sink channels.

What about the legality?  Well, I am not a lawyer, and I’m definitely not going to give you legal advice.  But to the best of my knowledge, no one in the United States has ever been prosecuted for watching unscrambled signals.  The thinking in the U.S. seems to be that anyone with a signal they want to protect has some duty to mitigate losses, by employing some form of encryption. I’m sure that certain content owners would disagree about the legality of watching just any unscrambled signal you happen to find, but I don’t think any court would be too sympathetic — and besides, are you really going to run around telling everyone just what you’re watching?  Assuming you’re not drunk and shooting your mouth off in a bar somewhere, that is.

However, in the past there have been unscrupulous people who have sold “hacked” receivers that pick up signals they are not supposed to be able to receive without paying.  If you buy one of those, you are an idiot.  Why?  Because those receivers will not continue to pick up those signals indefinitely, because companies change their encryption methods from time to time. So, after a while you’ll have to go back to the guy you bought it from and see if he can unlock it again, assuming you can even find him.  But chances are, the FBI or some other government agency will find him first, and will obtain his customer list, and next thing you know they’ll be at your door and you’ll be charged with theft of service, a federal felony. There is a HUGE difference between watching the unencrypted signals that are freely available, and using “hacked” equipment to try and receive signals that are encrypted. Try the latter and you may be doing most of your TV viewing on a communal TV in an inmate recreation area.

Most people who watch the free, unencrypted satellite TV realize that the hackers are a menace to the hobby. The last thing they need to to be labeled “pirates” and lumped in with those who just want to steal signals. So on many of the online satellite forums, any request for information on hacking a receiver will likely get you banned for life. That’s no small thing, considering that there are very few good sources of online information on the subject.

One of the best sources of information is the Free To Air (FTA) Discussion forum at SatelliteGuys.US.  And make no mistake, if you really want to explore this, there’s a learning curve.  For one thing, satellite dishes have to be aimed fairly precisely – getting just “sort of close” DOES NOT count.  For another thing, satellite signals don’t pass through solid objects of any kind, particularly trees with leaves or needles on them.  Even a small branch with four or five leaves can cast a shadow across a dish that will reduce the received signal to a point where it’s unusable.  And, for the most part, you can’t just take an old Dish Network or DirecTV dish and reuse it (although if you have an old PrimeStar dish, that will work, and the larger sizes of those dishes are much valued by those who view these free signals). You will need to learn about setting up a dish (best to use a pole in the ground set in concrete — with a satellite dish, additionl height does not get you more signal, but makes it a lot harder to clear accumulated snow off the dish in the winter, something else that can interfere with the signal), grounding the dish, aiming it at the desired satellite, and getting the signal to the receiver.

Still, for those who are into technical things, there’s nothing quite like the thrill of getting your first free TV signal from the sky! And unlike the shortwave radio signals that excited our fathers and grandfathers, these signals rarely fade out, so once you’ve “peaked” the signal you can watch the stations on that satellite until you get sick of them or they go away, whichever comes first. And with many people losing free “over the air” television due to the DTV transition, now might be the time to explore the world of Free To Air television, if you are so inclined (and are not adverse to the risk of spending money on equipment that may not be usable after some period of time).

Just one thing, DON’T call your local TV antenna installer and ask him to come out an install one of these systems – unless he’s also into this, he’s probably not going to know what the heck you are talking about. This is definitely a Do-It-Yourself project for most folks. Commercial installers know about commercial systems, like Dish Network and DirecTV, and they would be happy to install one of those systems for you.  My only advice with regard to those services is, seriously, make them put the dish on a pole in your yard, unless you like leaks in your roof, unsightly cable runs, and no TV after a wet, heavy snow (unless you climb up on a wet, slippery roof to clean the snow off the dish). Installers hate pole mounts because they have to make two trips (one to mix and pour the cement, then a day or two later to finish the install) so you may have to put your foot down and say “no yard pole, go away and I’ll get someone else, because you’re not putting a dish on my roof!!” But just remember, even if your roof doesn’t leak immediately after an install, that just means it’s going to take a while for the leaks to form — but once they do, what do you think your chances will be of getting that installer to come back and fix the damage?

Anyway, I’m not trying to talk you into this.  Most people who read this article won’t pursue Free To Air satellite any further, and that’s fine – too many users might hasten the departure of the remaining free (unscrambled) feeds. But on the other hand, too few users and it’s not worth it to the equipment manufacturers to build and market the receivers. So if you are truly interested, check out the forum mentioned above, and the sponsors on that site (and also the Global Communications site, run by an enthusiast and equipment dealer in Wisconsin).